The Other Exiles
by Rider Paladin
Summary: Massive crossover, based on Exiles: Six fallen heroes from six different worlds are brought together to set the wrong things right, in both their own lives and the worlds they are sent to.
1. Bite into the Rotten Apple

Hello. This is Rider Paladin, writing the first chapter of "The Other Exiles." I got tapped to write the first arc of this storyline, and I thought it had promise, so I signed up. It helps that I like the characters involved, too. Here, the new Exiles will be going on a trip to a "different" version of the Kingdom Come universe.

~EXE~

Nobody involved with the writing of this story actually owns any of the characters involved. That's a pipe dream.

~EXE~

Description: The Exiles are a team of reality jumpers whose personal timelines have been fractured, often in ways disastrous to their futures. They have been assembled in an effort to repair damaged timelines and hopefully restore their own broken lives.

Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): In another world, when Buffy sacrificed her life to save Dawn from becoming the Key, she became a pantemporal being, existing across all times and dimensions. Still desiring to do good, Buffy recruited several heroes from different worlds for this task.

Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto): In the world he comes from, he really did kill Naruto Uzumaki in his attempt to defect from the Hidden Leaf. Consumed with guilt, he joins the Exiles to have a second chance to save his best friend.

Spider (Marvel Universe): An A/U Peter Parker who fused with the Venom symbiote to take vengeance upon the killers of his family in the wake of the revelation of his secret identity during the Superhero Civil War. He has joined the Exiles in a bid to save his wife, aunt, and child.

Rogue (X-Men): In her world, an unexpected feedback from phasing through Rogue fused Shadowcat with her, blending both mutants into one entity that still answers to the name Kitty, but has taken on many of Rogue's mannerisms and abilities. It is her hope that she can give Rogue her life back.

Sara Pezzini (Witchblade): In her world, the industrialist Kenneth Irons raised her as his daughter and his weapon, and her horror at what her "father" used her for led her to rebel against him and use the Witchblade to fight him. It is her hope that she can restore the lives she took under Irons.

Nightwing (DC Universe): An A/U Dick Grayson was the unintended beneficiary of a plot by Lex Luthor to steal Superman's powers. Accidentally imbued with Kryptonian powers, and unintentionally contributing to Superman's death, Dick is with the Exiles to restore Superman's life.

Tommy Oliver (Power Rangers): In the world he comes from, the Green Ranger was freed from the evil spell that controlled his mind, just in time to see what he'd done to the Rangers he had once hoped to befriend. Wracked with guilt, he joins the Exiles in the hopes of saving them from himself, especially a certain Pink Ranger.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 1: "Bite into the Rotten Apple"

Spider was the first to recover from the shock of the trip. He looked up at the blighted cityscape above him and muttered, "We knew all that pollution was going to kill this city eventually."

The next to recover was Sasuke, the boy with hair styled almost like a duck's backside. "Where are we?" he asked.

"New York City," Spider replied. "Looks like it, anyway." He pointed at the Statue of Liberty, whose head seemed to have been blown open. "Poor Liberty, we knew her well. Ok, not really."

The dark, smoggy clouds obscuring the moon could be seen . . . as could the source of the smog, namely freshly bombed buildings which remains was still burning. The streets were littered with the wreckage of military-issue motorcycles and tanks and civilian vehicles, not to mention rubble from the destroyed buildings.

"Damn . . . what in tarnation happened here?" Rogue asked.

"That's what I want to know," Tommy replied. "I haven't seen anything this bad since . . ." He trailed off, a haunted look in his eyes full of mixed guilt and rage, the kind of look that said that whoever was responsible for this was going to go down _hard_ when he found them.

"Everybody who can go aerial better scout ahead," Nightwing said. He began rising into the air. "I'll take point."

Nightwing and Rogue lifted off and went into flight, gliding quickly and yet carefully, taking their time to observe the sights in this bombed-out version of NYC. Spider shot a string of sticky substance out of the back of his hand and once it was securely anchored to a sufficiently tall building, he lifted off and swung on it. This left Tommy, Sara, and Sasuke on the ground, walking.

"Stay sharp," Sara warned.

Just then, Spider shouted, "Incoming!"

That was the only warning they got before a rocket missile nearly cut down Nightwing and Rogue. Nightwing managed to scare it off by swatting at it, but that hadn't been the last of it. No, multiple rocket missiles were flying at the two in-flight superheroes, their number forcing them to dodge rather than just try to meet them head-on.

Sasuke saw the explosions in the air as Nightwing and Rogue outmaneuvered the missiles. "What kind of weapons are those?"

"Where'd you come from, kid, the Stone Age?" Spider mocked. "Those are missiles. The kind that turn you into a nice red paste if you get close enough without being tough enough."

The gem in Sara's bracelet glowed, and the metal of said bracelet expanded over her arm and spread to her body, forming a suit of almost organic silver armor over her clothes.

"I guess it's my turn," Tommy muttered, drawing a buckle from behind his back. The buckle was bronze with a gold coin set into the center and a red circular frame spelling "Power Ranger" around it. He thrust the buckle out, with the coin facing outward, and shouted, "It's morphin' time! Dragonzord!"

Immediately, green electricity and flame crackled around Tommy, and when it cleared, he stood transformed. Instead of his green singlet and black pants, he now wore a skintight green suit with white boots and gloves with green downward-pointing triangles extending from the cuffs. Completing the outfit was a silver-highlighted green helmet with a silver mouthpiece and a black visor framed by teeth, a gold shield with a diamond center around his chest, and the mysterious buckle now in the center of a white belt.

_What kind of transformations are those? _Sasuke wondered.

Nightwing held the Tallus to his mouth and asked, "Buffy, just what did you put us in the middle of?"

"_War, Nightwing. I put you in the middle of a war."_

Indeed, it seemed like a war, what with drone aircraft flying after Nightwing and Rogue and drone motorcycles coming at Sara, Tommy, and Sasuke on the ground.

"Would you look at that?" Spider asked. "They're ripping off Terminator!"

Tommy drew his dagger, which was a green blade that happened to look much like a flute, and moved into battle with the drone motorcycles, while Sara's armor formed sword blades from the backs of her hands. Sasuke began to perform hand seals, preparing for one of his signature Katon jutsu. The one he chose was . . .

"Katon! Goukyaku no Jutsu!"

The blue-shirted boy basically exhaled a giant fireball that flew right at the drone motorcycles, while Tommy and Sara jumped out of the way as the drones were consumed . . . and just rode through the fireball. All Sasuke had really done was set the drones on fire, and that wasn't really enough to stop them.

"Great. The one time 'kill it with fire' doesn't work, and it had to be now," Spider commented. "Thanks a lot, Sasuke!"

"Shut up and help!" Sara shouted at Spider.

"Anything for you," Spider retorted sarcastically, spraying his webbing as a thick net that halted the drones in mid-rush.

"Buffy, what are these things?!" Nightwing asked. "My heat vision isn't working on them!"

"_Vehicular wardrones,"_ Buffy replied. _"A safety measure against this world's metahumans. They kinda . . . I dunno . . . laid waste to nearly the whole world."_

"What?" Rogue shouted into the Tallus. "What about the X-Men? What about the Avengers? Don't tell _me_ they weren't around to stop this!"

"_The superheroes here would be the Justice League and the Outsiders,"_ Buffy corrected. _"At least, that's what they'd be called, if that was what they were . . . these days, anyway."_

"What are you saying?!" Nightwing yelled, even as he evaded the aerial drones at high speed.

"_I'm saying . . . the Justice League caused this."_

"Are you kidding me?" Nightwing asked. "The League would never –"

Buffy cut him off. _"This isn't your world, Nightwing. The realities here are different from what you know, and in this world, the reality is that the Justice League is responsible for this."_

Nightwing forced his head back in the game. Now wasn't the time for panic. Now was the time to survive, as he performed acrobatic twists in the air at incredible speed to avoid the missiles coming after him and Rogue.

Back on the ground, some of the motorcycle drones had broken through Spider's web-snare and were now powering through after the assembled reality jumpers. "Katon! Housenka!" Sasuke exhaled multiple fireballs, striking the drones directly with each one.

Tommy held his Dragon Dagger to his mouthpiece and played a note that generated a wave of green electricity from the dagger and sent it running along the ground to attack the motorcycle drones. Sara used the Witchblade to form a sword that she used to slice the drones apart. Spider fired a massive spray of webbing to trap the drones.

"They come out again . . . they're not surviving that time," Spider vowed.

"I think we have bigger problems," Tommy said.

"You sure?" Spider asked. "Because Superwing and Kit-Kat Rogue look like they can handle themselves."

Sara formed the Witchblade into great batwings and launched herself into the air with a mighty jump. The aerial drones diverted their focus to her, but she outmaneuvered their assaults and cut through their missiles with her blades. This lasted until she got up close to a drone and sliced it apart.

The other drones moved to attack her, but Rogue punched one of them out of the way, while Nightwing kicked another. At that moment, Sasuke charged up a skyscraper and then positioned himself at the very back edge of the rooftop.

"Chidori!"

Having formed the blade of white lightning in his hand, Sasuke raced across the rooftop, dragging the blade along the surface, and lunged off to stab another aerial drone coming after Nightwing. The lightning blade pierced the aerial drone and ripped it almost cleanly in half, and Sasuke landed on the building across from the one he'd jumped off.

"Not bad, Sasuke," Spider taunted. "You might just be worth something, after all."

"All you do is spray sticky stuff," Sasuke sneered. "I don't know what use_ you_ are."

"Least we didn't come out of a stupid anime," Spider retorted.

"Is he ever going to let up on that?" Rogue asked.

"No," Spider replied.

"Well, we'd better get out of here," Tommy said. "We've won for now, but there'll probably be more on the way."

"Just how are we supposed to get anywhere?" Spider asked. "We don't know where anything is, we don't know if this New York is anything like the New York I come from or 'Rogue' comes from . . . and we're being hunted down by Terminator rip-offs!"

Nightwing and Rogue landed. "We'll figure that out as we go along," Nightwing said. "Right now, we have to find someone who can help us. Buffy, do you have anything else for us on this dimension?"

"_There is a resistance force,"_ Buffy replied. _"It's made up of metahumans, too. They're mostly second- and third-generation."_

"Second- and third-generation?" Rogue asked. "Like, kids?"

"_Yeah. Kids,"_ Buffy confirmed.

"Kids," Spider muttered. "Now we know why we never had any."

"Let's just go already," Sara said.

~EXE~

The reality jumpers didn't go unobserved, thanks to the surveillance network established throughout the city. Several figures, hidden in shadow, looked at the footage of the reality jumpers.

"And just who the hell are those guys?" one asked.

"Canary, Hood, Flash – bring them in," another spoke up. "We'll find out who they are."

"Aye-aye, captain," a third assented.

~EXE~

Back in the city, the Exiles were on the lookout for another attack, when Spider shouted, "Look out!"

A lightning-like blur of red moved through the Exiles, knocking them down. "What the hell?!" Sasuke exclaimed, activating his Sharingan, but the blur was still moving too fast for him. He could identify that it was a redheaded girl in a black leather jacket over a gold-trimmed red outfit, but like Rock Lee had once said to him, being able to see who was attacking him was pointless if he wasn't fast enough to keep up.

_A Flash,_ Nightwing thought as he began moving at super-speed himself to keep up with her. "Why are you after us?"

"Nothing personal," the Flash replied. "I've got a job to do."

Nightwing and Flash began to fight, exchanging blows at incredible speeds that even Sasuke could barely see, let alone hope to match. Just as the others were about to get up again, Spider found himself dodging bullets. Without really thinking about it – his spider-sense took care of things like that – he fired a glob of webbing in the direction he sensed the gunfire coming from.

"Damn it!" he heard a female voice shout. A second later, he heard the clang of a discarded gun. Before the gunslinger could even fire, Spider charged and decked her. His spider-sense went off again before he could get a good look at whom he'd just punched, and he ended up dodging a sword swing.

Spider managed to get a good look at his newest assailant, a petite blonde in a black leather jacket, something that looked like a one-piece swimsuit, fishnets . . . and a sword blade protruding from her forearm. "And who the hell are you supposed to be, Lady Samurai?"

The blonde simply jumped up and kicked him in the face, then pressed her advantage by swinging her blade at him. Spider simply clapped his hands on either side of her blade, stopping it. He then kicked the blonde in the gut, sending her flying . . . only for her to flip backward and land on her feet.

When she attacked again, Tommy and Sara blocked her with his Dragon Dagger and her Witchblade. The leather-clad blonde slashed Tommy with her arm-sword, not managing to cut through his armor, but still stinging quite a bit. This left Sara to fight the blonde by herself.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Black Canary," the blonde replied, just as she attacked Sara.

Just then, Rogue came up to Spider. "You all right, sugar?"

"We'll live, Kit-Kat," Spider answered. His spider-sense went off again, and he dodged more bullets coming from the gunslinger, whom he could now tell was a redheaded girl wearing a red hood and red-tinted sunglasses. "Who do you think you are, Lady Cyclops?"

Rogue was dodging bullets as well, but one grazed her. Normally, she would have been able to laugh it off . . . but this one really, _really_ stung. "What the –?!"

"Armor-piercing rounds," the gunslinger explained tersely.

"Katon! Housenka!" Sasuke began shooting fireballs out of his mouth at the gunslinger, but she dodged them and returned fire with her guns. Sasuke attempted to dodge, but one of the bullets caught him in the shoulder. "What!? What's going . . ."

"You've been shot," the gunslinger answered. "With a bullet. Where do you come from that you don't know about guns?"

Sasuke gripped his bleeding shoulder and triggered his Cursed Seal, the red flame-like marks spreading over his body and hardening into black tattoos. He held his bloodstained hand and formed a second Chidori in it, then charged the gunslinger, fully intending to repay her for the injury he'd suffered. The gunslinger shot at him, but this time Sasuke saw her bullets and dodged them as he made his way toward her.

The thing that stopped Sasuke from impaling the gunslinger with his Chidori was the Flash deflecting it with a chop to his wrist and then kneeing him viciously in the stomach. Sasuke snarled and, while it was still active, turned the Chidori on her, which the Flash grabbed and _absorbed!_

"What . . . are you?" Sasuke asked.

"Explanations later," Flash replied. "You're coming with us."

"I don't think so," Rogue said, tapping Flash's shoulder. Flash used her speed to skip behind Rogue and then throw a "hurricane kick" faster than Rogue could dodge. Another "hurricane kick" knocked down Sasuke alongside Rogue.

"Thanks for the save," the gunslinger commented sourly.

"Sure thing, Hood," Flash answered with a slight smirk.

Just then, Nightwing came up from behind her. "I thought you were running away at first . . . but you were saving your teammate instead."

"Your boy's a loose cannon," Flash remarked.

"You _were_ trying to kill us," Spider commented.

"If I really did want to kill you, you really would be dead," Flash retorted.

"Speaking of 'dead,' what about Little Red Riding Hood?" Spider asked. "She _was_ shooting at us."

"And if you'd been hit that easily, you wouldn't have been worth the effort," Red Hood rejoined. She kept her gun hand in a relaxed but ready position, aimed right at Spider.

"Canary!" Flash called. "You can stop now. We won't get anywhere fighting them."

"You sure?" Black Canary asked, even as she blocked another slash from the Witchblade.

"I'm sure," Flash confirmed.

"Sara! You can stop, too," Nightwing called. He turned to Red Hood. "And as for you . . ." A wing-styled shuriken flicked out from his wrist and he snapped it out at Red Hood's gun, knocking it out of her hand.

"What the –?" Red Hood uttered. "What the hell was_ that_ about?"

"I don't like guns," Nightwing stated. "Now. What do you want with us?"

"Considering that the six of you are walking out in the open in a warzone, it's only going to be a matter of time before the Justice Pricks find you," Red Hood replied. "I mean, we're just using equipment pirated from them, so imagine what _they_ could do."

"Our mission control said something about the League being responsible for the mess we're in here," Nightwing said, as the other still-conscious Exiles gathered around him. "What did they do that made the world turn out like this?"

"You wanna know?" Black Canary asked. "Come with us. It's not safe here."

"You sure about this?" Spider asked. "Because we don't trust you one bit."

"Spider . . ." Nightwing responded. "We don't have to trust them. But we might be in more danger out here than we would be with them. I'm willing to take my chances. Are you?"

"That's why you're the Fearless Leader," Spider quipped.

~EXE~

The Exiles and the Canary-Hood-Flash trio arrived in what looked like a hollowed-out subway station. "This is your base?" Spider asked.

"It's a lot cooler than it looks," Red Hood said. "Hell, why do you think the League of Dicks hasn't found us yet?"

"Yet?" Tommy repeated, having powered down his Green Ranger armor.

"It's only a matter of time," Red Hood answered cynically. "I intend to go down kicking ass when it happens."

"Very optimistic and hopeful of you," Flash drawled sarcastically.

"There you are," a deep, almost sinister male voice greeted. "It's nice to meet you."

The Exiles and the Canary-Hood-Flash trio turned to see that they were not alone by any means. Standing before them was a man in a full-faced pointy-eared mask with glowing white lenses and black body armor with a dark blue bat symbol across his chest and back. If Nightwing hadn't known better, he would have sworn that was this universe's Batman.

Beside "Batman" was a Tamaranean woman in what appeared to be a black-and-purple one-piece styled after the Nightwing costume, only with plunging cleavage and Tamaranean battle braces. There was an armored man whose suit resembled a blue-black Atlas beetle. Another was a shadow simultaneously more solid and more insubstantial than the other shadows surrounding them. Beside the shadow was a woman in a black-and-white outfit with a green flowerlike symbol over her chest and green skin.

"So who are you guys supposed to be?" Spider asked mockingly. "The Amazing Super-Friends?"

"The resistance," "Batman" replied. "So who the hell are you, and what were you doing wandering out there in League territory?"

"I still don't get this," Nightwing said. "The League. Why are they the danger here?"

"I don't know what kind of idiot you're pretending to be, but I'm not falling for this," the shadow snarled, making a move to attack Nightwing.

The green-skinned woman held up a hand glowing with green light to stop him in his tracks. "No, Obsidian. We're not going to get answers this way."

"So how about we just simmer down and talk it out all grownup-like?" Rogue suggested.

"Batman" nodded, turning to the others. "You mind?"

"Still don't trust them," Red Hood grunted, "but whatever. Your call, Batwing."

"Batman" glared at Nightwing, looking at the symbol on his chest. "You wear his shield. Want to explain that?"

"Circumstances," Nightwing answered.

"Really?" a voice asked. "Circumstances are making you wear his symbol?"

Nightwing turned and looked at what appeared to be Kyle Rayner, who was in a costume Nightwing didn't quite recognize. There were familiar parts, such as the armored fingerless green gauntlets and boots and the Green Lantern Ring on his right hand. The parts he didn't quite recognize were the white facemask with green-rimmed eyes and the white breastplate with a cracked green lantern in the center.

"Kyle?" Nightwing asked.

"You know me?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah . . . at least I did," Nightwing replied. He turned to "Batman" and glared at him. "I know you're not Bruce."

"How astute," "Batman" answered. "But that doesn't make me any less Batman."

"You don't get to call yourself that!" Nightwing exclaimed in outrage, about to lunge for "Batman's" throat when a black blur stopped him. Nightwing got a clear look at the boy, and a boy it was, no older than Tim Drake. He wore a skintight black suit with gold highlights and a gold symbol on his chest that simultaneously resembled a bat and a bird. A thin black domino mask concealed his eyes. "And who might you be?"

"Nightwing," the boy answered. "Who are you?"

"Nightwing."

The other Nightwing made a short clicking noise with his tongue. "That's a doozy. I'm Nightwing. You're Nightwing. How are we not going to get confused with each other?"

Nightwing took off his mask. "Because I'm Dick Grayson."

"Liar!" the dark-haired Tamaranean yelled, going for his throat almost immediately. "Dick Grayson is dead! I watched him die!"

"Not the one you know . . . whoever you are," Nightwing-Dick clarified. "I'm from a different reality than this."

"Different universe, huh?" Obsidian remarked. "That might explain why you're walking around wearing that guy's shield; you don't know what it means here."

"You keep talking about Superman and the Justice League like they're the bad guys," Nightwing-Dick said. "Why is that?"

"Because they are," the dark-haired Tamaranean replied, letting go of Dick's throat.

"Batman" looked at Dick and removed his mask, revealing a tanned, handsome face with sharp features framed by dark hair and accented by ice blue eyes. "This world's been in a bad situation for the past ten years. Metahumans running wild with no regard for life whatsoever, kicked off by Magog killing the Joker after the Joker gassed the _Daily Planet_ staff for his usual sick laughs. When Kansas got blown off the map in one of their skirmishes, Superman and Wonder Woman decided to reform the Justice League and bring back some order . . . only their order was even worse."

"Even worse? How?" Dick asked.

The other Nightwing looked at Dick. "They decided to take over the entire planet. Since the human race had welcomed the new 'heroes' on the block even knowing what kind of raging violence junkies they were, the League decided that they'd lost the right to decide for themselves how the world was going to be run. In other words, 'the strong must protect the weak, sometimes from themselves.' So was their justification."

"Looks like not all of you agreed with that," Spider remarked.

"Nope," Red Hood said. "Never liked anybody trying to tell me how to live."

"That's what happened?" Rogue asked. "Bunch of super-powered fascists decided to run the show themselves?"

"Yeah," Black Canary confirmed. "And anybody who disagreed with them was forced to go underground if they didn't want to get killed or sent to the Phantom Zone."

Nightwing-Dick took a step back, appalled. "How . . . how could things have gotten like this?"

"World went to hell," the armored Blue Beetle replied. "They got sick of it . . . and sick of the people they felt let it or made it happen."

"Now you're going to answer us," "Batman" declared. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"Who are _you_ and where do you get off masquerading as Batman?" Dick retorted.

"I _am_ Batman. That's all you get."

Dick tensed up, ready to fight, but the other Nightwing held him back, along with Rogue and Sara.

"Aww, man," Spider moaned. "We wanted to see a showdown."

"Batman" put his mask back on. "That's enough. Nightstar, Lantern, Beetle . . . take them somewhere they can sleep it off. We'll deal with them in the morning."

"Sure," the Blue Beetle said, escorting the Exiles to some available sleeping rooms alongside Nightstar and Kyle.

~EXE~

"He's actually kind of cute," Red Hood remarked.

"Who?" Black Canary asked coyly.

"Who do you think?" Flash asked. "The Hunk Wonder himself."

"Yeah . . ." Black Canary agreed with a smirk. "And the best part? This one's young enough to be my brother."

"Olivia, we know damn well you've got nothing sisterly in your head for him," Flash commented.

"You guys!" Nightstar exclaimed. "He's my father!"

"Not in his universe," Red Hood amended. "Hell, he's too young to be your father, anyway." She popped some gum into her mouth and chewed it.

"Well, father or not, I'd still love to go a few with him," Flash remarked.

"Iris, you're shameless," Nightstar growled with playful irritation.

"You only say that because you've got Batman," Flash drawled.

"What Batman and I do is none of your business," Nightstar retorted.

"Then you shouldn't have a problem with what we want to do with Super-Hunk Wonder," Red Hood rejoined with a smirk.

"I'm just gonna sleep," Nightstar groaned. "Listening to you three talk about my father like that is going to give me nightmares . . ."

"Or really sweet dreams," Black Canary purred.


	2. Flash in the Pan

Note: Seeing as the response has been generally positive, I see no reason not to continue with this idea. This chapter will have answers for some of the questions you were asking yourselves about last chapter. It'll have other things, too. Lots and lots of other things, but never mind that. I will warn you, though; you'd better come prepared with actual command of the English language if you have criticisms to make.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. Neither does my partner, the great JOUNOUCHI-sama. Yes, that is his pen name.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 2: "Flash in the Pan"

~EXE~

It was morning, and Nightwing had decided he'd try to cook for everyone. Sure, they hadn't been the nicest to him and his team coming in, but they were strangers in a war-torn world and didn't exactly survive on virtue of being nice. As he exited his room – after making sure he was still sanitary – he spotted his teammates doing their own things.

Tommy was performing katas, slowly at first but building up speed as he moved on. Sara seemed to be meditating. Sasuke was using dummies as target practice for his shuriken and kunai. Spider was just hanging off the wall not doing anything except glowering behind his mask. Kitty was just staring at Spider, as though contemplating throwing stuff at his head.

Nightwing made it into what had to be the kitchen and looked for ingredients to cook with. Finding what he was looking for, Nightwing began to prepare the morning meal for everyone, humming an old tune quietly. He heard a whooshing sound behind him and chuckled. "That you, Flash?"

"Yeah," Iris replied with a hint of sultriness. "So you cook?"

"Yeah," Nightwing admitted with a smile.

"You clean, too?" Iris asked, her tone coquettish.

"I do a lot of things," Nightwing replied impishly.

Iris slid a hand up his shoulder, her thumb coming close to the crook of his neck and shoulder. "I'll bet. I'd like to see some of those things sometime."

Nightwing shivered as he felt Iris's thumb stroking a particular pressure point at his neck. Regaining his composure, he smirked slightly. "Maybe I'll show you one of them."

Just then, Black Canary entered, looking none too pleased with Iris. "Flash."

"Canary," Iris replied coolly.

"Batman wants to talk to us," Black Canary said. "That includes you, Nightwing."

Nightwing did not miss the flirtatious tone in her voice upon the mention of his name. "Tell 'Batman' that he can at least allow his merry band to eat something."

Black Canary whistled. "Gotta love a man who cooks."

"I try," Nightwing answered dryly. "Tell him we'll be coming with breakfast."

"Sure," Black Canary said, and sauntered away with a particularly pronounced swish of her hips. Iris literally vibrated, so intense was her displeasure. Nightwing put a hand on her shoulder, massaging it slightly to calm her down. In a way, it had the desired effect, as Iris's vibrations did slow down. It didn't exactly cool her off, as Nightwing's touch was stoking fires inside her that she never thought she'd experience. A low breath escaped her lips.

She put her hand over his and squeezed, as though urging him to grip harder. Nightwing looked at her curiously, not wanting to hurt her should he lose control of his strength. Iris smiled, and that smile looked like a preview of a wild time. "Go ahead."

Nightwing gripped her shoulder more firmly, and Iris could feel all the tension from Black Canary's interruption melting away. Mischief on her mind, she moved her free hand to Nightwing's back and slipped it lower to grope his firm backside.

"Cheeky, aren't you?" Nightwing remarked with a smirk.

"Yeah," Iris replied saucily. "Nice ass."

"I get that a lot. I honestly don't see what the big deal is."

"So modest." She leaned up on her tiptoes, about to kiss him, when someone else interrupted.

Nightstar.

"Iris, you mind not making out with him until we've had breakfast?"

Iris reluctantly pulled back from Nightwing and stuck her tongue out at Nightstar. "You're no fun, Mar'i."

~EXE~

Batman's resistance force and Nightwing's Exiles met at the dinner table, with Nightwing serving them all breakfast for the day. Some had waffles, some had pancakes, some had bacon, some had toast, some had scrambled eggs, and nearly everyone had at least two or three of the aforementioned breakfast foods.

"Dig in," Iris offered. "It's good."

Batman began to eat, in slow, measured bites. "Yes. It is good."

"Yummy . . ." Lian purred.

Tommy looked at Lian open-mouthed. He couldn't believe how _brazen_ this girl was. Sasuke was shocked, too, but kept it hidden behind his stoic façade. Sara and Spider simply exchanged a look between them. Kitty whistled.

"Wow. Ain't seen a girl enjoy food like that since . . . well, it's been a long time."

"I recognize some of you," Nightwing said to the Outsiders, "but not all of you."

Batman looked at Nightwing. "I suppose it's only fair I told you who I am. The original Batman is my father."

"He's mine, too," Nightwing said.

"No, I mean _by blood,_" Batman clarified. "He sired me."

"So who's the mother?"

"_Talia al Ghul,"_ Buffy's voice spoke up from the Tallus. _"Currently Mother Superior in this world's India."_

"You mean she's Mother Theresa?" Nightwing uttered, completely in disbelief.

"Where's that voice coming from?" the Outsiders' Nightwing asked.

"_My personal corner of the Omniverse,"_ Buffy answered. _"So, anybody got any questions they'd like answered?"_

"Yeah," the Outsiders' Nightwing responded. "Where did these guys come from?"

"_Different worlds,"_ Buffy explained. _"Let's just say all six of these guys are in really bad spots right now and their only way out is to fix broken timelines. Like yours."_

"Broken?" Nightstar repeated.

"_Yeah,"_ Buffy confirmed. _"Things weren't supposed to turn out like this. You were all supposed to learn some serious lessons about the value of human life and the responsibilities that come with your power. Instead, this world has degenerated into a three-way war between you guys, the Justice League, and the humans who'd rather see you all dead. That's what happens when timelines get broken."_

"So these guys are supposed to fix things?" Kyle asked. "How?"

"_They're going to help you topple the Justice League,"_ Buffy replied. _"Say hello to . . ._

"_Nightwing – Dick Grayson, who now has his world's Superman's powers._

"_Spider – Peter Parker, bonded to a pernicious alien symbiote slowly eating his sanity._

"_Rogue – what you get when two mutants get fused because one tried to phase through the other and got molecularly bonded to her._

"_Sara – the chosen wielder of a weapon called the Witchblade._

"_Tommy – the sixth member of a team of planetary defenders called Power Rangers._

"_Sasuke – recently departed junior ninja from a hidden village of magic ninja in his home reality."_

Nightwing looked at his Outsiders namesake. "All right. I guess you know who we are now. Would you like to tell us something about yourselves?"

"My name's Jonathan Kent," the Outsiders' Nightwing replied. "I'm . . . Superman's son."

Nightwing-Dick smiled at Nightwing-Jonathan. "I remember my world's Superman telling me a story once, a legend from Krypton about a man who was cast out of his family and chose to defend the helpless. No one ever knew his real name, but they knew the name he gave himself – after a flying creature on Krypton – Nightwing."

Jonathan smiled. "Yeah. That's the one."

"And you guys?" Nightwing asked, turning to Batman, Nightstar, and the Canary-Hood-Flash trio.

"Thomas Wayne," Batman answered.

"Mar'i Grayson," Nightstar spoke up.

"Olivia Queen," Black Canary introduced herself.

"Lian Nguyen," Red Hood said.

"Iris West," Flash said.

Nightwing looked at Nightstar, taken aback. "You mean, you're my daughter here?"

"Yeah," Nightstar replied.

Nightwing looked at Nightstar, suddenly finding it clear just who her mother was. Other than the wavy black hair, Nightstar was the spitting image of Starfire – the same burnt gold skin, the same solid green eyes, the same Amazonian physique, and slightly blush-worthy, the same lack of abashment about showing off that physique.

"Is . . . is Starfire still alive?" he finally asked.

"No," Nightstar answered sadly. "She isn't."

Nightwing's heart sank. Whatever he and Kory had had was long over, but he still cared about her, a part of him still loved her, and to hear that she had died in this cruel, unforgiving world was almost too much. Mustering up his will, he looked up at Batman. "What about Bruce? What happened to him?"

"Dead," Batman answered. "Superman did it. That was when I took up the mantle myself. To give everyone a symbol to rally behind."

"What about you?" Nightwing inquired of the Canary-Hood-Flash trio. "What happened to your parents?"

"Dad's with the League," the Flash answered.

"Mine are dead," Black Canary replied. "Died fighting the League."

"Still kicking," Red Hood responded.

"You call yourself Nguyen," Nightwing observed. "Did Cheshire raise you?"

"Yeah," Red Hood admitted. "Taught me what I know about fighting. So did Dad."

"Who's your dad? Roy?" Nightwing asked.

"Red Robin," Red Hood amended. "You might know him. He's the guy who called himself Robin after you started calling yourself Nightwing."

"Jason?" Nightwing uttered, stunned again. Then it finally kicked in. "The hell?! He's still alive?! I don't know if I ought to be happy or mad!"

"Yeah," Red Hood confirmed.

"I'm guessing you and Jason don't get along so well, Superwing," Spider observed. "Is he family?"

"Not really, and kind of," Nightwing admitted. _No wonder she turned out like this,_ Nightwing thought. _With parental influences like Cheshire and Jason, no wonder._ Out loud, "Jonathan? You mind if we talk about your mother later? Just us Nightwings?"

"Sure," Jonathan assented.

~EXE~

After Dick had gotten Jonathan alone, he said to him, "You never mentioned your mother."

"Wonder Woman," Jonathan replied.

"Wow . . ." Dick uttered. "What happened to Lois?"

"Dead," Jonathan answered. "Joker killed her. Then Joker got dead. That's how all this started."

"So you're saying the world went to hell because someone killed the Joker?"

"Yeah. My dad hauled the guy in, but when the jury let him off the hook – Joker was a monster, he deserved to die – my dad felt betrayed by the people he'd sworn to protect . . . and he left them to their fate."

"Why'd he come back?"

"The new generation went too far. Beating up on not just criminals, but each other for kicks, not caring about the collateral damage, and then Kansas got wiped off the map. Thanks to a little prodding from Wonder Woman, who happened to be the mother of his child – me –Superman returned to action, reformed the Justice League . . . and one thing led to another. Things got worse, and the League got harder in order to deal with them."

"So why did you join the resistance?"

Jonathan paused before speaking, as though gathering his courage. "I didn't want to be part of it. Their way was no way to achieve any kind of peace. They thought Batman's resistance was ruining the 'balance' they'd achieved, but their 'balance' was more like a reign of terror for everybody that they thought wasn't on their side or couldn't be counted on to 'make the right choices.' I was sick of it, so I left to find Batman's resistance and join them."

"Must have been rough," Dick said.

"It was," Jonathan admitted. "At first. But it gets easier to deal with."

Dick gently rubbed Jonathan's shoulder with his fist. "You're a pretty tough kid. Somebody's gonna be proud of you."

"Thanks," Jonathan answered.

"What do you say we go back with the others? I gotta ask Iris about something," Dick suggested.

Jonathan smirked. "You wanna ask if she'll give you a kiss."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Dick answered dryly.

~EXE~

As Dick and Jonathan approached, they heard Iris, Lian, and Olivia arguing. "I keep telling you," Iris said, "you two have no chance with him."

"And why's that?" Olivia asked archly.

"Because Nightwing likes redheads," Iris replied with a grin.

"Damn!" Lian exclaimed. "My hair was red last week!"

Olivia sniffed. "It's gonna take more than a fire crotch to get into Nightwing's pants."

"Yeah, like being able to keep up with him," Iris retorted. "Can you?"

Dick cleared his throat. "Ladies."

"Hello," Olivia purred. "Anything I can do for you?"

Dick smiled. "You can give me and Iris some alone time. I'd rather not have an audience."

"Sure," Olivia pouted, only to smirk when she heard the innuendo in Dick's voice. She stood up and walked out of the room, along with Lian and Jonathan.

"I'm guessing you're here for business," Iris commented once Olivia, Lian, and Jonathan were gone. "Unless I already made an impression on you."

"You did, but that's not the point," Nightwing answered. "Your father. I want to know what would make him stay with the Justice League even after what they did."

"He thinks by staying with them, he can make them hold back a little," Iris replied.

"Is there any way we can get in to talk to him?"

"Sure there is." Iris took out a Mother Box. "A little something Avia left behind."

"That can get us into the League's headquarters?" Nightwing asked.

"Yeah. Just need the coordinates programmed in."

"Have you shown it to anyone else?"

"No," Iris admitted. "It's the only way I have to still talk to my father."

"You think you can get me in there so I can talk to him?" Nightwing asked.

"Yeah." Iris used the Mother Box to open a boom tube, which was amazingly silent.

"You muted it?"

"Yeah. Don't want anybody listening in. Mind if I come with you? Dad might be a bit startled to see you."

"Sure." Nightwing smiled. "Why not?"

~EXE~

"Everything's . . . green," Nightwing uttered.

"Yeah," Iris replied. "This whole space station is made from Green Lantern's energy."

Nightwing whistled quietly. "Wow. Guy was never capable of that where I came from."

"He couldn't, either – until he started using the ring as a medium and drawing directly from the battery."

"How could he do that?"

"The battery's part of his suit now," Iris explained simply.

"Wow," Nightwing breathed out.

Just then, a red blur happened by Nightwing and Iris, sweeping them up and carrying them away into a corner of the space station. "Wally?" Nightwing asked. He began to snicker, quietly at first but slowly loudening until he had to close his hands over his mouth to keep from alerting the League. Calming down somewhat, he smirked at what had to be his longtime friend. "You look ridiculous."

"It's for Jay," the Flash answered. "And who are you supposed to be?"

"It's Dick, Dad," Iris replied. "Just from a different reality."

"Yeah, I think I've seen you around," Flash said. "The League's seen you around, too."

"Why are you still with them, Wally?" Nightwing asked. "I didn't think you were the world domination type."

"I'm not," Flash confirmed. "At first, I thought I could sway enough of them back to reason, that they were still the friends I knew, but they've changed. This war, everything, it's just . . . it's ruined them." He cracked a smile. "And why do I look ridiculous? At least I have an excuse. That shield clashes with your entire outfit."

Just then, Superman arrived. "Flash. I'm very disappointed."

"_Clark,_" Flash retorted acidly.

Superman's eyes narrowed and began to burn with the light of heat vision. "I'm guessing he doesn't like being called Clark," Nightwing joked. His tone then turned grim. "Iris, get him out of here."

"I can help you," Iris insisted.

"You don't get it," Nightwing answered. "I _need_ Wally out of here."

As carefully as he kept his voice steady, the Flashes could hear the pain in his voice. "Fine," Wally said. "Just don't die on us, man."

"I won't," Nightwing answered.

"How are you here? And what are you doing wearing my shield?" Superman asked.

"I'm going to give you a chance," Nightwing replied. "A chance to see reason and stop this."

Superman's face hardened. "You really don't understand what's going on here. I used to think that my example would inspire everyone to do good by one another, make the world a better place. Instead they grew complacent. Grew degenerate. I didn't understand . . . until they chose _him_ over me."

"Him? You mean the man who killed the Joker?"

"I see someone in the resistance has given you a history lesson. Yes, that man. They celebrated him, called him a man of 'true resolve and courage.' He was just a thug, and they were all fools for accepting him as their protector. They reaped what they sowed. You see, Nightwing, I am still this planet's protector. _We_ are still this planet's protectors, but we understand now – sometimes you have to protect them from themselves."

"And that's how you justify taking away their freedom?!" Nightwing exploded.

"Freedom?" Superman echoed. "Freedom. Freedom to do what, live lives of selfish indulgence and complacency? No. That's over."

"You don't get to decide that!" Nightwing yelled. "The Superman I knew wouldn't do this! _You're no Superman!_"

He punched Superman in the jaw, twisting his head around by almost 75 degrees. Superman turned back to face Nightwing and glared at him. "My turn."

When Superman punched Nightwing, it threw him through all the walls in the space station until he collapsed on the far end. "Damn . . . never thought he could hit this hard . . ." Nightwing muttered to himself. "He's gotten stronger . . ." Just as he was rising to his feet, a super-speeding Superman had grabbed him by the head and thrown him out into the central area of the space station.

Nightwing rolled to his feet, only to be pummeled in short, vicious bursts by Superman. Getting fed up with being Superman's punching bag, Nightwing dodged his last punch and began applying his death-defying acrobatic skills to evading and countering Superman's blows. As fast as he was, though, for every blow he dodged or countered, the ones that hit him in between struck him harder than he ever thought Superman could hit.

Just as Nightwing was about to throw another punch, green energy chains wrapped around his arms and legs and held him up. "Green Lantern . . ."

"Interesting," Green Lantern remarked.

Wonder Woman stepped in, as did several other Justice Leaguers, some he recognized and others he didn't. "Is this him?" Wonder Woman asked.

"Yes," Superman confirmed.

"Was all this worth it?" Nightwing asked. "The lives you've ruined? The devastation that's happened because of you?"

"Sometimes, peace must be imposed," Wonder Woman stated coldly, pointing a broadsword at his throat and nicking him with it. Nightwing winced in pain.

"God-forged weapons must be nice, huh?" he commented.

"Joke while you can," Green Lantern responded.

Just then, a boom tube opened up behind Nightwing and red hands pulled him inside, freeing him of Green Lantern's chains.

~EXE~

"How is he?" Nightstar asked.

"He's healing fast, even without the Purple Ray," Batman replied. "He's going to be sore for a while, but there should be no long-lasting damage."

Nightwing opened his eyes, finding himself in what had to be the medical area of the Outsiders' headquarters. "That was very stupid of you," Batman stated.

"I had to see if I could reason with him," Nightwing said. "Guess not."

"Those injuries you had weren't from someone willing to see reason," Nightstar remarked.

"How'd he get so strong?" Nightwing asked.

"Superman's body continually absorbs and processes solar energy," Batman replied. "You have to remember, he's 20-some years older than you might know him from your time. In this case, older means stronger. Much stronger."

"I can tell," Nightwing groaned. "How are the others?"

"Spider and Rogue wanted to wipe the floor with Superman," Nightstar answered. "Spider in particular said, and I quote, 'We're going to rip that bastard's head off, peel the skin and hair off it, and crush his naked skull with his brain and eyes still inside.'"

"Didn't know he cared," Nightwing remarked.

"Get some rest," Batman advised. "We'll see you later tonight."

Nightwing looked around his surroundings. While they were sparse, they were also surprisingly neat. Of course, they _had_ to be neat; couldn't risk the patients getting sick while they were supposed to be recovering. Just before he could distract himself with inanities like that, he saw a blurring in the wall, as though someone was vibrating through it.

Indeed, someone was, that someone being Iris West in a light silk gown that was amazingly short. Nightwing noticed that the gown set off her green eyes and long red hair, the latter of which made her look surprisingly feminine. Not that the gown hurt matters, either, given the surprisingly impressive cleavage it showed.

"I thought my Hunk Wonder needed some proper care," Iris purred, emphasizing the word "proper."

Nightwing smiled. "Not a professional's idea of proper care, but I don't see how it could hurt."

Iris got onto the cot with Nightwing, straddling his waist and reaching up toward his face. Nightwing gently grasped her hands. "Oh? You want to keep the mask on? Kinky."

Nightwing smiled up and kissed her passionately, a kiss Iris returned with equal hunger. After a minute, they broke the kiss, mainly because Iris needed to breathe. "Been a while?" he asked her.

"Been a while," Iris repeated with a smirk.

"Then let's make this worth your while." Nightwing smiled and kissed her again, his tongue gently lapping at her lips. Iris parted her lips to allow his tongue entrance, and his tongue not only entered, it savagely plundered her mouth in a way that took her breath away. Moaning into the kiss, Iris reciprocated eagerly as she felt one of Nightwing's hands in her hair, the other moving down her back, and something poking her very eagerly down below.

Maybe this world would be a better experience than either of them thought.


	3. Rising Dragons, Fallen Heroes

Note: Here we come to the exciting climax of the first arc of "The Other Exiles." In the words of Deadpool, "now is fighty time, fighty time, blood, blood, blood!" True to how the canonical Exiles operate, there will be no take-backs when it comes to death, and membership will rotate frequently. Oh, and for those of you with opinions positive, negative, or neutral about Nightwing/Iris, I should mention that Dick won't be doing the entire Omniverse, even if the entire Omniverse wants to do him. That's just not how he rolls.

Disclaimer: The characters, series, and settings featured here are largely A/U twists on characters, series, and settings that do not belong to me. The original idea is Doc4's and I am merely carrying it forward for him. Also, I don't make any monetary profit or gain other material compensation from this story. I'm just doing it for fun. And fun this is.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 3: "Rising Dragons, Fallen Heroes"

~EXE~

Sara Pezzini was heading toward the infirmary room where Nightwing was when Spider dangled in front of her on a web-line. "What do you want?" she asked.

"You might not want to go in there," Spider replied liltingly.

"Why? Something happen to him?"

"You could say that."

"Then why are you stopping me?"

"He needs his privacy. She does, too."

"She?" Sara repeated.

"Yeah," Spider confirmed, smirking beneath his mask. "Gotta say, Superwing really knows how to hit it off with the ladies."

"So he's recovered?"

"Yeah. TLC, you know."

Sara raised an eyebrow. "I'll bet." She moved past him and onward to the infirmary.

"Don't say we didn't try to warn you, because we did!" Spider shouted after her. "We did!"

Sara rolled her eyes and went into the infirmary, finding Nightwing resting comfortably on the cot, his naked chest partially obscured by Iris's naked body draped over him. She smiled mischievously and cleared her throat to draw their attention to her.

"Have fun, lovebirds?"

"Hi, Sara," Nightwing greeted dryly.

"You might wanna get dressed, you two," Sara suggested. "No sense in keeping everybody waiting. Besides, Wally's on the verge of hunting you down like a dog. And Tommy-boy – not Greenie, Batman – is getting bored."

Iris smiled. "Batman can actually get bored?"

"It's been known to happen," Nightwing remarked.

After both Iris and Nightwing changed back into their uniforms at super-speed, they followed Sara to the breakfast area. As they went, Spider punched Nightwing lightly in the shoulder. "What do you want, Spider?" Nightwing asked.

"We're just looking forward to the carnage that's gonna result when the ladies find out who you picked," Spider replied mischievously.

"Whatever you say," Nightwing drawled.

~EXE~

"Glad you could make it," Batman growled.

"So you're just as grouchy as Bruce," Nightwing remarked. "Glad to know some things don't change."

Nightstar spotted Nightwing holding Iris's hand covertly and smiled behind her hand. Wally spotted the same thing and gave Nightwing the "we're talking before you go" look. The other Exiles and Outsiders were at attention as well, and it didn't escape Lian's or Olivia's notice that Nightwing and Iris were holding hands.

Iris just grinned at her two rivals in love, who both scowled at her. Nightstar raised a hand to tell them to stop before someone got hurt, namely them. While the three girls were willing to quiet down, the tension in the air was so thick Rogue thought Wolverine could have cut through it.

Sasuke was the first to speak. "What do we do?"

"In a war of attrition, we'll lose," Batman explained. "Our only chance of winning is to take the fight directly to them."

Obsidian looked at Batman. "Are you certain that's a good idea?"

"Yes," Batman replied. "Some of us have powers perfectly capable of countering theirs. Jade, your powers aren't dependent on an external source the way Jordan's are. Jonathan, you don't have your father's vulnerability to magic since you're also of magic and your telekinetic powers give you defensive capabilities superior to his. And since we have _two_ Flashes on our side instead of just one . . ." He looked at Iris and Wally before continuing to speak. "We have an edge that they don't have, particularly in light of the fact that one of them knows the League's base inside and out."

"Glad for the vote of confidence," Wally remarked, "but aren't you sounding a little too optimistic?"

"Confidence goes a long way toward inspiration, Wallace," Batman answered. "A leader's no good unless his followers believe in him, and his followers won't believe in him unless he believes in them. Simple logic. Besides . . . I have an ace in the hole."

"And what would that be?" Tommy asked.

"You guys," Batman replied. "You're all unknown factors, because none of you are from this universe and with the exception of Grayson, none of you resemble anyone the League is familiar with. So we have the edge of surprise." He then turned to Iris. "You still have the Mother Box?"

"Yeah," Iris confirmed.

"Good," Batman stated. "We go tonight."

~EXE~

As they prepared for their mission tonight, Nightwing got a call from Buffy on his Tallus. "Yeah?"

"_I'd like you to keep an eye on Batboy."_

"Why, exactly?"

"_Because I don't trust him. I've seen guys like that before, and I can tell you that he's one bad day away from going over the edge."_

"A lot of us are."

"_Except by taking down the Justice League, who's going to be left to keep him in check?"_

"Nightstar. He loves her. I can tell."

"_Love doesn't always make someone a better person. In a lot of ways, love can make someone worse."_

"Point taken."

Just then, he heard Spider's mocking voice calling him. "Oh, Wingman . . . it's time for us to be kicking the Justice League's asses! Get it in gear!"

Nightwing came out. "Is everyone ready, Spider?"

"Everyone but you, it seems," Spider replied.

"Let's go," Nightwing said.

Tommy pulled out his morpher and thrust it outward, shouting, "It's morphin' time! Dragonzord!" Green flame and lightning lashed out around him, forming the Green Ranger costume over his body. Beside him, Sara's Witchblade expanded over her body, forming the familiar organic metal armor.

Iris used the Mother Box to open a boom tube to the Justice League's headquarters. One by one, they all passed into the inter-dimensional portal . . . and when they passed through . . .

~EXE~

The Justice League stood before the Exiles and Outsiders, ready to fight. Superman just glared at them all. "Did you really think we wouldn't be ready for you after that stunt you pulled?"

"Too much to expect, I suppose," Batman retorted.

"Thomas," Superman spoke. "You don't want to end up like your father."

"You were his best friend," Batman snarled, "and you murdered him, anyway." With a twist of his wrists, he extended promethium blades from the forearms of his costume.

"It didn't have to go like this," Superman mused, just before punching Batman hard enough to throw him against the far wall . . . in between blinks of an eye.

"And now it's fighty time, fighty time, blood, blood, blood all over the place!" Spider shouted, lunging into the fray and viciously pummeling every Justice Leaguer within range of his fists, feet, or symbiote's extensions.

"Freak-boy's got the right idea," Red Hood commented, drawing her guns and practically dancing out of the way of her attackers as she shot at them.

Sara and Rogue tag-teamed against Wonder Woman, while Nightstar and Jonathan fought Power Woman. Nightwing fought Superman, while Tommy, Jade, and Kyle fought Green Lantern. Sasuke was using every Fire Release technique he had in his arsenal to hold off other members of the League. Obsidian used his shadows to his advantage, binding, trapping, and even attacking members of the League. Blue Beetle was tag-teaming with Spider to fight the other members of the League, using his morphing armor to his advantage.

Superman and Nightwing traded blows, Nightwing dodging and countering Superman to the best of his ability, which was pretty good considering Superman was stronger and faster than him. The only edge Nightwing could have had over Superman was that he'd been trained by the original Batman for years in fighting, something this Superman likely didn't have.

Meanwhile, Blue Beetle asked Spider, "Do you have to act like you're having so much fun?"

"Yes! Because we are! And you should be, too!" Spider shouted as he smashed two Leaguers' heads together, knocking them out.

"You're nuts," Blue Beetle groaned even as he used a disruptor cannon to knock out several more attacking Leaguers.

"_Sanity . . ._ IS FOR THE WEAK!" Spider yelled as he used his symbiotic tendrils to savagely brutalize another Leaguer, laughing while said Leaguer fell to the ground barely alive, much less conscious. "_Anyone else?!_"

"My God . . ." Sara uttered when she saw what had happened.

"He's freaking crazy!" Rogue exclaimed.

Wonder Woman batted both Exiles aside and turned her attentions to Spider, charging at him with the Sword of Hephaestus extended. Spider blocked her sword with an armored forearm, only for her to swing around and kick him in the stomach. Spider flipped back, shot a web to anchor himself, and swung into a brutal kick to her head.

"Diana!" Superman shouted, lunging at Spider and slamming him into the ground. "You animal . . ."

"Really? What are you, then?" Spider mocked, just before his suit burst into symbiotic extensions that grabbed Superman and threw him into a wall. He rose to his feet, smiling maliciously beneath his mask. "Oh, we know. Deluded."

Superman fired a blast of heat vision at Spider, who dodged it and webbed Superman's eyes shut. Superman's response was to burn the webbing off his eyes and attack Spider again, only for Nightwing to intercede with a kick. Spider was swarmed by Leaguers wanting to avenge their fallen comrade, and he disposed of them with the same viciousness and wanton cruelty as he had of the first.

Meanwhile, Jade and Kyle engaged Green Lantern in a three-way duel of willpower-formed hard-light constructs. Tommy had begun fighting Wonder Woman, in a contest of martial prowess and mystically augmented power.

_Damn,_ Tommy thought. _I can't fight her like this. Guess I have no choice . . . damn it. I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this._

Nonetheless, the Sword of Darkness came out, slashing Wonder Woman. "Give up now," Tommy declared. "There's only so long I can control this thing. And then . . . it's game over for you."

"This isn't a game, boy," Wonder Woman warned.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," the Green Ranger snarled, and the battle was joined once again, the Sword of Hephaestus versus the Sword of Darkness. The Green Ranger clanged the Dragon Dagger and the Sword of Darkness together, generating an emerald energy blast that knocked Wonder Woman off her feet.

"What kind of dark magic is this?" Wonder Woman asked.

"You'll never know," Tommy answered, just before dashing in to slash Wonder Woman again. This time, Wonder Woman blocked his sword with hers. Tommy's response was to hold the Dragon Dagger to his lips and blow a tune that allowed him to form an energy whip from the dagger that struck Wonder Woman again and again. When the tune finished, Tommy slashed the air with the dagger, striking Wonder Woman with an arc of green lightning.

Wonder Woman immediately got up. "Is that the best you can do?"

"You haven't even seen my best yet," the Green Ranger retorted, a dark smile forming on his face.

The two Nightwings tag-teamed against Superman; Dick fought him close-range, and Jonathan stuck to telekinetic attacks. Superman fought back with a tactical kind of viciousness, shattering Dick's escrima sticks when he attempted to bring them to bear on him. Jonathan telekinetically lifted the remnants of the sticks and fired them at Superman like shrapnel, only for Superman to deflect them with ease.

"It doesn't have to be like this," Superman said to his wayward son.

"Actually, it does," Jonathan retorted. "This isn't the way to do things, and you know that! We're not going to solve anything terrorizing the humans into submission!"

"Sometimes, fear is necessary to get the point across," Superman responded, just before battering Jonathan's telekinetic shields. The young Kryptonian-Amazon hybrid concentrated as his psychokinetic force field began to fail, and then expanded it into a force blast that threw Superman aside . . . and right into a kick from Dick.

Sara and Rogue were now fighting Power Woman, and Power Woman was finding the fight more challenging than she thought it'd be. The reason was that Sara's Witchblade was a mystical weapon, and Kryptonians were not necessarily immune to mysticism. Thus, Power Woman had to do a lot of dodging and evading instead of just powering through the two women like she was normally inclined to do.

It was not an easy task; Rogue was just about as fast as she was, and a good enough fighter to keep her on guard. Sara was also quite the fighter, and surprisingly savage in her fighting style. The Witchblade was surprisingly adaptive, too, forming sharp tentacles from its substance to attack Power Woman even while Sara herself wasn't close enough to tag her.

Just as Spider was having himself a ball beating the crap out of every Leaguer that crossed his path, his spider-sense went berserk. "Uh, guys?" he called to the other Exiles. "We might be in trouble here."

"You think?" Sasuke retorted.

Just then, they were interrupted by a sudden rocking of the space station and multiple explosions. "What the hell?!" Kyle yelled.

"They fired on us!" Hal shouted. "They fired on us!"

"Who?" Wonder Woman asked, even as she blocked the Green Ranger's sword.

"The U.S. Army," Superman answered. "They need to be taught a lesson. Again."

"Actually, we're losing altitude," Mister Terrific warned. "In fact, this space station's going to crash down to Earth, and a good number of us are gonna burn alive on reentry into Earth's atmosphere."

"Is there any way you can stop it?" Power Woman asked.

"If I get into the pilot's chair, I can at least make a controlled crash," Mister Terrific replied, rushing toward the space station's controls.

"This is it, I suppose," Sara remarked. "You pushed them to the breaking point, and now they've decided they'd rather have you crash onto Earth and take a bunch of innocent people with you than live under your heel any longer."

"They'll learn," Superman stated tersely, and flew out of the space station, rocketing toward Earth.

"He's going to kill them!" Nightwing-Jonathan shouted.

"Good," Wonder Woman spat. "Maybe they'll learn their lesson, then."

"How can you be so cold?" Nightwing-Dick interrogated. "You were supposed to enlighten this world! Wasn't that your mission?"

"They refused to be enlightened," Wonder Woman retorted. "The only way peace can be achieved in this world is to force it."

"I don't believe that," Nightwing-Dick insisted. "I won't believe it! I'm going to stop him!" With that statement of intent made, he leaped out of the space station and flew after Superman.

"Dad's going to kill him," Nightwing-Jonathan muttered, jumping out of the plummeting space station and flying after Dick and Superman.

"Is it getting hot in here, or is it just you two?" Spider remarked to Sara and Rogue. Receiving no response, he continued on. "Let's play a game! Since we're all going to die or be horribly maimed anyway, we might as well confess our greatest desires, regrets, etc. Or we could just go crazy and kill each other right now for all the time we've got left!"

"You're nuts," Sasuke grumbled.

"_We're_ nuts?" Spider asked.

"We're not going to solve anything by killing each other," Batman stated. "And we're not going to solve anything by confessing our darkest secrets to one another, either."

"You're no fun, Bats," Spider pouted. "Come on, live a little!"

"We're about to die," Batman stated grimly. "We don't have time to live."

"Spoilsport," Spider pouted.

~EXE~

Meanwhile, Superman had just punched through Earth's atmosphere and was now tearing apart the U.S. Air Force. Nightwing and Nightwing – Dick Grayson and Jonathan Kent II – were simply dodging the fighter jets to the best of their incredible abilities and trying to stop Superman from killing everyone.

"This isn't going to solve anything!" Dick yelled.

"They decided to strike against us," Superman answered. "I'm teaching them the penalty of striking against us."

"They wouldn't have struck against you if you hadn't insisted on tearing down their entire society and subjugating them!" Jonathan retorted.

Superman fired a blast of heat vision at Dick, but Jonathan blocked it with a telekinetic force field. He then re-formed the field into psychokinetic blades that slashed at Superman, but did no more damage than tearing his clothes and minor flesh wounds that rapidly healed. Superman flew at Jonathan, ready to finish him off, but Dick interfered with a hard bicycle kick.

Just then, the remaining Air Force fighter jets fired upon all three combatants, and Jonathan threw up a telekinetic shield around himself, Dick, and Superman. "How long can you keep that up?" Dick asked.

"Long enough," Jonathan replied.

"They're not going to stop firing," Superman warned. "They're humans. They're too stubborn and obstinate to give up when they should."

"That's what makes them stronger than us," Jonathan retorted.

"I used to think that, too," Superman admitted somberly. "But you'll learn. You'll learn."

"Learn what? To be a tyrant like you? To rule through fear and be guided by hate?"

"You don't get it. You don't get it at all. You still think there's hope for them."

"You thought that, too, once," Jonathan spat back.

Just then, one of the jets shot a missile at the three, and the missile actually managed to punch through Jonathan's shield. Since he was closest to the missile when it went off, he took it hardest, while Dick and Superman were less harmed.

"Jonathan!" Superman shouted in anguish. Of course, he would have no time to reflect on this, as the space station was plummeting closer and closer to Earth.

"If you don't want Wonder Woman to end up like Jonathan, you'll help me stop this!" Dick shouted. "Things have gone too far already! The only way this will end if you keep going the way you have is that _everybody's_ going to die! And I _know,_ deep in your heart, you don't _want_ that to happen!"

Not waiting for Superman's decision, Nightwing flew toward the space station, ready to slow its descent with his own body no matter how futile his efforts might ultimately be. He attempted to brace the space station with his own body, but the space station simply tore itself apart around him and its separate pieces began to plummet even faster.

"Great time for physics to kick in," Nightwing muttered tonelessly.

As one piece of the space station fell even faster than the other, a wounded Jonathan managed to catch it with his telekinesis, while to his surprise, Superman was helping him. "Dad?"

"Maybe you were right," Superman answered. "Maybe you were wrong. But your death or mine or even these people won't prove it."

As Nightwing attempted to stop the other piece of the space station, Wonder Woman and Power Woman came out to aid him. "Huh?"

"We're not doing this for you," Power Woman answered tersely.

"Wasn't expecting it," Nightwing shot back semi-jokingly.

Just then, multiple beams of green light streamed out of the broken sections of the space station, creating a cage that contained them and slowed their descent. While the landing was rough, it did not result in total loss of life. Of course, the ones who were able to survive . . . ended up with high-powered rifles with anti-meta ammo pointed at them.

"Look, guys . . ." Spider started to say. "Can't we all just get along? Seriously?"

The soldiers merely tightened their trigger fingers, as the surviving Leaguers – Superman, Wonder Woman, Power Woman, Green Lantern, and Firestorm – looked ready to fight as well. Even the remaining Outsiders looked pissed. Then the Nightwings stepped into the middle of the simmering confrontation.

"This doesn't solve anything!" Dick declared. "All these years you've spent fighting, what do you think they've accomplished other than bringing the world closer and closer to doomsday?"

"Maybe the people trusted the wrong heroes, but you didn't prove yourselves to be any better," Jonathan added to the League. "In the end, you proved yourselves even worse. These people aren't right to try to kill you, but they are right to lose trust in you, and that's trust you're going to have to work to get back."

"And how do you expect us to do that?" Firestorm asked. "They don't want us."

"By showing them –" Wally took off his helmet and his mask, revealing his face, which was somewhat older than Dick was used to seeing any version of Wally "– that we're willing to exist alongside them, not above them. The way it always should have been."

Following his lead, Batman and Iris removed their masks, and Red Hood removed her shades to expose her eyes. Kyle Rayner and Hal Jordan removed the masks of their Green Lantern uniforms, and Blue Beetle powered down his armor, revealing Jaime Reyes.

"He's right," Hal admitted.

"_I guess I was wrong,"_ Buffy's voice spoke from the Tallus around Nightwing's wrist. _"You didn't have to kill anyone after all. There was some good still there."_

"Somebody said once that nobody chose evil because they wanted to do evil, but that they simply mistook it for good, for the happiness that they sought," Nightwing mused.

"_Mary Wollstonecraft,"_ Buffy filled in. _"What? As long as I'm stuck here, I figured I'd do some reading. Giles would have loved it."_

"Giles?"

"_Never mind. Point is, you guys have to leave now. This timeline's starting to fix itself because of you, so you're no longer needed. Of course, somebody's going to be coming with you from here."_

"Who?" Nightwing asked.

~EXE~

The next thing the Exiles and their newest teammate Iris West knew, they were in another world. It looked a lot like New York City, but with nests of giant spider webs between the buildings and skyscrapers. Some of those buildings had been burned down, while others looked like they'd been bombed out. Vehicular wreckage was all too constant at various street intersections.

"Well," Iris remarked. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire, huh?"


	4. Flipside of the World's Coin

Note: This arc of "The Other Exiles" is Soundwave-82's contribution to the series and it's based on the Web of Shadows "black suit ending." Essentially, Spider-Man has gone to the dark side, seduced by the power of the symbiote. Of course, some things will be quite different here. If you want to know how different, then read on.

Disclaimer: The characters here belong largely to Marvel, DC, and other franchises. We make no money whatsoever from this story.

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 4: "Flipside of the World's Coin"

~EXE~

The Exiles walked down the street of this world's New York City. They found the streets covered in abandoned vehicles, a sad end to the once-famed "city that never sleeps."

"Where is everybody?" asked Iris.

"Must be bingo night," Spider quipped as he looked at the building covered in black webbing. None of them noticed that they were being watched by a creature with razor-sharp teeth, large muscles, and a large tail with a pointed tip. It was Scorpion.

"Fresh meat," it said as it was joined by an army of creatures that looked like him and there were purple pods behind it. A birdlike creature joined them while more of its army flew over head.

"Boss must know we have located some of the resistance and they have a symbiote. She'll want to turn them into hosts herself," said Symbiote Vulture

"You tell her, I'll follow them, see if it can lead us to the others," instructed the first creature as they watched the Exiles walk the streets of the seemingly abandoned New York. They encountered a female civilian whose clothes were torn and was being chased by sixteen Lizard-like symbiote creatures.

Spider was shocked when he saw the creature and so was Rogue. They knew the symbiote race from their worlds but they only knew a certain few. Not like the hordes that occupied the city now.

"Man, Venom must have been busy lately. We've never seen that many before," he said as they chased after the Symbiote Lizard and the Lizardlings.

"What are they, anyway?" asked Iris.

"They are symbiotes, alien creatures that survive by bonding with hosts and sharing their power with them. I encountered one on an alien world, and it seemed useful at first when it bonded to me, but Dr. Richards explained to me it was not only alive, but sentient and strengthened itself by feeding off my emotions. Eventually, I got rid of it, but when my family was murdered, my anger drew the symbiote to me and we became one again," explained Spider.

"What's their weakness?" asked Iris.

"Intense heat and loud noises," Spider replied. "The vibrations produced by loud noise hurt them."

_Symbiote Lizard Hive _

_Pier 46 _

_New York City, USA _

They soon found the female in a warehouse cornered by the Symbiote Lizard. The Lizardlings' floor was covered by black goo and there were three large pods resting on the floor.

"_Where is the resistance_?" asked Symbiote Lizard as he detected Spider and the Exiles, turning to face them.

"Whoa, is that the Lizard?" asked Spider.

"_Who are you and how did you acquire the boss's costume?_" demanded the Symbiote Lizard and he prepared to attack the Exiles.

"Can't we get along like friends?" suggested Spider.

"Don't you ever stop with the bad jokes and poor humor?" asked Tommy as he drew the Sword of Darkness and Sara activated her Witchblade.

"_Take them down,_" the Symbiote-Lizard ordered.

Lizardlings charged towards the Exiles. Nightwing smacked one of them and sent it flying through the warehouse wall, leaving a large hole in the wall. Rogue grabbed another one and tossed it through the wall.

As Sara battled the Lizardlings, she sliced one's tail off but it grew right back.

"You have got to be kidding me," she said in irritation.

"_Remember, lizards re-grow lost limbs," _explained Buffy.

"That's just great," Sara said as she looked at the Green Ranger battling them even if he was struggling against the evil of the very sword he was using. They watched as Symbiote-Lizard held the female over his head and threw her towards one of the lizard pods. Fortunately, Spider caught her and placed near the Exiles. Spider jumped towards Symbiote-Lizard and kicked him into the wall of the warehouse. Spider then punched the Lizard into the chest and then uppercut him and knocked him out. As he did, the Lizardlings ran off.

"Mark my words, you and the resistance will fall and then the world will follow suit," threatened the Symbiote-Lizard as he headed after his soldiers.

_Symbiote Hive _

_Empire State Building _

A female Black Symbiote clad fighter that looked like Spider right down to the white spider symbol on her chest stood watching the city covered in Symbiote pods and Symbiotes crawling the street.

Her generals stood around her. Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Electro and many other heroes and Villains stood with her and were now symbiote hosts, kneeling in her presence.

"_Soon I'll crush the resistance and then the rest of the world be mine to control and I will show all those people that think with great power most come great responsibility they are wrong,"_ she declared. Then she snickered in amusement. _"Great, I'm doing a monologue like some dime-store super-villain."_

The Lizard knelt at his master's feet.

"_Were you able to locate Havok?_" she asked him.

"No, master, some more resistance fighters showed up but one of them was bonded with a symbiote and was able to hurt me," replied the Lizard.

"_And you ran off scared, you coward,_" the woman sneered, glaring contemptuously at her general. "_I should kill you where you stand for your failure, but that would be stupid of me. I never understood why super-villains insisted on chopping off their underlings' heads whenever they screwed up. I can understand the frustration, particularly thanks to you, but that's just a waste of valuable resources._" She looked at all of her generals. "_And I still need you all._"

"Yes, master," said all the Symbiote generals and they listened to Spider-Woman laugh evilly.

_Elsewhere _

The Exiles entered the sewer system, following the young woman they'd rescued from the symbiote-corrupted Lizard as she led them through the maze of sewers. They soon reached the resistance camp and looked around at all the sonic weapons being made by adults and some kids.

"So how did those things take over the city?" asked Iris.

"_It was __a war with Spider-Woman and the symbiote army she commands that did it. They have enslaved most of New York population but thanks to SHIELD it was contained in New York. But soon, the Vulture and his Vulturlings will attack other cities. They have Toni Stark and Dr. Rebecca Richards working on a powerful bomb to destroy all the symbiotes without harming the host and they will need your help to defeat Spider-Woman and Black Cat and save this world from the symbiotes," _explained Buffy from the Tallus around Nightwing's wrist.

They soon reached the resistance camp and found the key members of the resistance member looking a badly torn map of New York which was held in place by daggers with white skulls on their handles.

The resistance leader was Cyclops, but Rogue and Spider were shocked at seeing this version of Cyclops was female and even more shocked to see female versions of the heroes they knew from their worlds. One of these was the Punisher and there was even a female version of Wolverine.

"Did you get the part for device, Alexia?" asked Cyclops.

"Yeah, sis, I got the part for the bomb but my squad got captured by Rhino and his Berserkers and turned into symbiote hosts. I couldn't do anything to stop it; they even got Polaris and Edward. They're the ones that told me to leave them to make sure they got the part for Toni and Rebecca's weapons," replied Alexia.

"Don't worry, we'll save them. We have enough weapons soon to launch an attack on the Empire State Building and use the weapon to free all the people that Spider-Woman corrupted. We'll get Edward and Leo back and who are the people that you brought with you?" asked Cyclops.

"Oh, these are the people that saved me from Symbiote Lizard," explained Alexia

That was when the Resistance members trained their weapons on Spider, thinking it was a trick by Spider-Woman.

"No, wait, we're on the good guys' side," said Spider as he quickly put his hands up and then he saw a female Daredevil.

"Put your weapons down; he's telling the truth," said Daredevil and the resistance members lowered their weapons.

"You brought a symbiote into the base? How stupid can you be, little sis, they'll find the base!" exclaimed an irate Cyclops.

"Man, some cute guys make a change from the normal guys down here," commented a female Human Torch as she looked at Nightwing and Spider. "Very nice, indeed. I wouldn't mind be with either one of those at all."

"Good God, it's bad. A female Johnny. Just what we need, a man-eater. How could our day get any worse?" groaned Spider.

"God, you're as annoying as Spider-Woman with her stupid humor. Whoa, how much I would like to gut her for the bad jokes she always made in a fight," ranted Wolverine smoking a cigar. As she did that, the other Exiles started laughing.

"Hey, our jokes are all A-list material," protested Spider.

"Yeah, right. And she says that, too," retorted Wolverine.

"And you are bad-tempered as always, just like the Wolvie we know," said Spider.

"I have to agree with Sugar on that. All Wolverines are bad-tempered and they all hate Spider's jokes as do most people he meets," Rogue commented.

"Not you, too, Rogue, now we're hurt," Spider mock-whined.

"As much as I hate to break it to you, sugar, you need to work on your material," Rogue shot back jovially.

"Quit joking around," Cyclops growled. "Even if he isn't working with Spider-Woman, how do we know for sure that his symbiote won't lead her right to us? And who is he, anyway?"

"We're . . . we're Spider-Woman without the female parts," Spider replied. "And we're from another universe, as I'm sure you could guess. One where we're all guys instead of girls . . ."

"And what's so bad about us being girls, bub?" Wolverine asked in a low rumble of irritation bordering on anger.

"Nothing, nothing!" Spider answered quickly. "We like girls! And women! It's just . . . it's kinda jarring for us, ok?! And we're sure you're freaked at seeing Rogue and us, because we're pretty sure Rogue's a guy here!"

"The man does have a point," Daredevil admitted.

"So who are you and what are you doing here?" Punisher asked.

"Nothing special, we're just here to save every reality in existence from collapsing on itself," was Nightwing's answer. "And saving this reality puts us one step closer to keeping the Omniverse from falling apart completely."

"Alternate universes," Havok mumbled. "I _hate_ that crap."

"What happened, you try to hitchhike back home and some jackass carried you off into another dimension?" Spider quipped.

Havok stared harshly at Spider, who just shrugged.

"What about the rest of you?" Cyclops asked.

"I can help," Sasuke said. "If these symbiotes are weak against intense heat like Spider says, then my Katon jutsu should be able to deal with them."

"Katon jutsu?" the Torch repeated.

"Ninjutsu based on turning chakra into flame," Sasuke explained. "My family specializes in that form of elemental chakra conversion."

"So you'll be useful," the Punisher observed dryly. "At least one of you is."

"Hey, we can be useful, too!" Spider protested. "We're a symbiotic union! We'll be able to sense the ones on Spider-Woman's side!"

"I can shoot waves of intense heat from my eyes," Nightwing added. "The others should be generally helpful in outfighting the symbiotes."

"Fine," Cyclops said. "Besides, we need all the help we can get if we're to get in and out of the symbiotes' base of operations alive."

"And that'd be where, exactly?" Spider asked.

"Empire State Building," Daredevil replied.

"At least it's not ESU," Spider mused aloud. "Still have too many fond memories of that place to see it get taken over by alien creepy-crawlies."

"Technically, you _are_ an alien creepy-crawly," Sara remarked.

"Touché," Spider conceded.

"The sonic weapons are for taking on the symbiotes, right?" Tommy surmised.

"Yeah," Cyclops confirmed. "We're going to split into two teams. One team to plant the sonic bombs and the other to distract the symbiotes and give the first team enough time to get everything set up. Sound good to you?"

"Feels like home again," Tommy remarked. "Fighting extraterrestrial menaces to save the world from their clutches. I'm in."

"So am I," Iris agreed.

"I'm in, too," Sara said.

"Let's do it," Rogue joined in.

"I'm with them," Sasuke agreed.

"Speaking for myself and my team, we're in," Nightwing said.

"Ah, what the hell?" Spider sighed. "It's time we met our sister from another world, anyway."

"Then let's get ready," Punisher growled.


	5. The City of Hard Knocks

Note: The next exciting chapter in this arc of "The Other Exiles" is here. Here, the resistance forces and the Exiles will be faced with some hard decisions, and Spider may be forced to realize just what he has become.

Disclaimer: The characters seen in "The Other Exiles" are the creative property of various people that aren't us. We make no money from this story, either; we're just doing it for fun.

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 5: "The City of Hard Knocks"

~EXE~

Cyclops watched as Iron Woman and Ms. Fantastic brought over the device they'd been building for the last few hours and set it down.

"Good," she remarked. "The device is finished. We can finally end Spider-Woman's control of the city and free those the symbiotes have captured and taken over, only this how it's going to work. Team One will fight the symbiotes to draw them away from the Empire State Building. Team Two will assault the Empire State Building itself."

"Ok, we'll go with the group that attacks the Empire State Building," Spider suggested. "Besides, it's time we met our sister from another universe."

"Ok, Tommy, Iris and I will go with the squad to Central Park and help them drawing out the symbiotes," Nightwing added. "Spider will go with Sasuke, Sara and Rogue to back up the resistance in their attack on the Empire State Building."

"We'll defeat them and save all those people that Spider-Woman corrupted, including Josh and Edward," Cyclops said.

~EXE~

Iris and Nightwing walked together into the armory, looking at all the SHIELD agents and police officers as they prepared themselves. The agents and officers loaded their weapons and equipped sonic grenades to their grenade belts.

"Nightwing, do you think the device this Rebecca Richards has created will be able to defeat the symbiotes and free the hosts without hurting them?" Iris asked.

"Don't worry," Nightwing replied. "According to what Spider told us, Ms. Fantastic and Toni Stark are the smartest people in the world and the device should be able to free the hosts without hurting them."

"How can Spider wear something like that?" Iris asked. "Some alien parasite that feeds off his emotions and fuels his rage?"

"Why do you think he jokes around so much?" Nightwing asked. "It's his way of still feeling human." As he looked at Iris and saw the worried look on her face, he could tell she wasn't eased by this at all. "What's the matter, Iris?"

"I'm just worried that one of those creatures will take me over and I'll be hurting you or my friends," Iris confessed. "I can't bear to hurt you, Dick; please promise me you kill me if I become one of those things."

"Don't worry, I won't let anything like that happen to you, and if one of those things gets on you, I'll rip it off myself," Nightwing vowed. He hugged Iris and then they embraced in a passionate kiss.

Just then Wolverine entered the armory and watched them with some degree of distaste. "Oh, will you two get a damn room?" she remarked irritably. This made Nightwing and Iris break their kiss and look at Wolverine standing there. She then entered the armory and watched the SHIELD Agents and police officers loading the weapons.

~EXE~

"You two have more experience in fighting aliens than me," Sasuke said to Tommy and Sara, the three having gathered in a secluded area. "What do you think our chances of winning this are?"

"So long as we go all out and don't stop for anything?" Sara replied. "Pretty good. We got experienced fighters on our side, and we've got us. We'll be ok."

"Do you worry?" Sasuke asked, looking at the dormant Witchblade around Sara's wrist.

"About the Witchblade taking me over?" Sara filled in. "Like how those symbiotes take over their hosts?" She looked at the Witchblade around her wrist. "Sometimes. Then I remember that I've got things to do, so I don't worry about that so much."

"It's gonna be a rough fight, I'll admit," Tommy interjected. "We'll need all the help we can get, and I think these guys can bring it for us. And we'll be backing them up along the way, too." He clapped a hand on Sasuke's shoulder reassuringly. "It'll be ok."

"If we save this world, and the others . . . do we . . . do we get to start over?" Sasuke asked. "Do we get to fix our own messed-up lives?"

"I don't know about that, Sasuke," Tommy admitted. "What I do know, is that it'll be worth it if we can save all these people who need us to save them. Focus on that."

Sasuke nodded. "I've been working on a new ninjutsu. A variation on Chidori that I can use to take on multiple opponents. I haven't finished it yet, but . . ."

"It's ok," Sara said. "We'll let you work on it."

"Thanks," Sasuke replied. After Tommy and Sara had left, Sasuke returned to his practice, thinking to himself. _It'll all be worth it if I can save you._

~EXE~

Meanwhile, Spider was watching Cyclops talking to Nicole Fury, director of SHIELD on a communications screen. Neither of them noticed him on the ceiling, partly because of the natural human tendency not to look up very often and partly because he was using the symbiote's optic camouflage.

"You can't be serious!" an appalled Cyclops exclaimed. "They're going to launch a nuclear strike at the Empire State Building? That won't just kill the symbiotes, that'll take out everybody in the city!"

"I'm sorry," Fury answered, "but the government believes that Richards and Stark's weapon won't work and the rest of the world will still be in danger. This is the worst-case scenario."

"What about those people in the safe zone?" Cyclops asked. "You're going to kill them, too! Are you serious?"

"We have to ensure that not one symbiote escapes the city," Fury stated evenly. "If the weapon is successful, then we will call off the bombers. You have 24 hours to defeat Spider-Woman and her symbiote army and then turn these Exiles over to us. We need to know what we are dealing with, and all that knowledge of alternate realities will come in handy protecting our world from them."

"Yes, ma'am, we will hand them over to you and SHIELD," Cyclops assented. Upon turning off the communications screen, she was surprised by Spider jumping down and pinning her by the throat.

"What the hell are you doing?" the outraged wall-crawler asked. "You're going to allow SHIELD to destroy the city?"

"Nicole's doing what she has to do to protect the other 49 states from the symbiotes," Cyclops retorted. "She gave us 24 hours to beat the symbiotes, and I believe in Stark and Richards's weapon. You should know better than any of us how dangerous these Symbiotes are, given your intimate relationship with one."

"And what if we can't beat her in 24 hours? You gonna let Fury blow up the city?" Spider interrogated. "Tell me, Summers, what would Xavier think if she found out you were going to back Fury's decision to nuke the city?"

"This is the worst-case scenario," Cyclops answered. "If we fail, then the whole city is consumed by Spider-Woman's army. Every day we have fought this war with her, her army has grown and we are running out of soldiers to help us fight."

"The Cyclops we know would never agree to allow Fury to drop a nuclear bomb on New York, even if it was taken over by symbiotes," Spider insisted.

"She's thinking of the other cities and the world," Cyclops answered. "If the symbiotes get out, then the rest of the world will be in danger."

"We hope you can live with being an accomplice to the murder of an entire city's population," Spider snarled, and dropped Cyclops and left. Cyclops could do nothing but reflect on Fury's plan to drop a nuclear bomb on New York City if they couldn't stop the symbiotes. Despite her harsh demeanor in front of the web-slinger, all the lives that would be lost if they failed troubled her a great deal. She just hoped it wouldn't come to that.

~EXE~

As Spider walked out, he was confronted by Rogue. "We don't want to hear it, Kitty."

"Too bad, sugar, because the both of you are gonna hear it," Rogue retorted. "What was with you shaking down Cyclops in there?"

"Let's just say, if we don't stop the symbiotes, Cyke is willing to let this world's Fury turn the city into a radioactive crater," Spider replied. "Sure, that'll kill the symbiotes. That'll kill _everyone!_ You think we can let something like that slide?"

"No, we can't," Rogue replied. "But if you're anything like the Spider-Man I know, you know there's a better way than what you just did."

"That's just it, Kit-Kat," Spider answered with a hint of despondency in his tone. "That man died with the last people who ever meant anything to him."

"Doesn't have to be that way," Rogue denied, her voice softening as she reached out to touch his cheek.

"Thanks," Spider said. "But it's too late for us. Much too late."

~EXE~

Wolverine walked into the room while Cyclops was still preparing. "What's up with your candy ass?" she asked. "You look like someone choked the life out of your puppy?"

"It's just . . . am I doing the right thing, Loren?" Cyclops asked.

"Of course you are, Summers," Wolverine grumbled. "If I didn't think you were, I'd be the first to call you out."

"There's just one problem," Cyclops went on. "Whatever happens to this city from this point forward is on us. If we don't free everyone from the symbiotes, we'll have what's effectively the capital city of the planet turned into a staging ground for a full-scale war on the human race. Those things will infect everyone we know, everyone we love, and destroy everything we ever cared about. And I can't . . . I can't let that happen. No matter the cost."

"Look at it this way," Wolverine answered. "If you're gonna die, you might as well die knowing you did everything you could to save 'em. And if it's the only way to keep more innocent people from getting hurt, you do it. You do everything you have to. That's why you're our leader, Cyke."

Cyclops paused, contemplating her longtime comrade and rival's words. Then she looked at Wolverine with a hard stare. "Thanks, Loren. I needed that."

"Anytime, you candy-assed bitch," Wolverine answered. "Now let's get the others. It's time."

~EXE~

Some minutes later, Cyclops had assembled the remnants of the resistance and the Exiles. "Are we ready to end Spider-Woman's control over the city?" she asked. Looking over at everyone, she saw that they were all prepared and loaded down with sonic weapons to counter the symbiotes.

Cyclops looked over to the Punisher loading her Benelli 12-gauge shotgun and thought back to what Spider had said to her. Cyclops looked at the SHIELD agents that were still in the city. As far as she knew, none of them had any idea what the Director of SHIELD was planning to do if they failed their mission.

_I should warn them about Fury's plan but how would they react if they knew about it?_ Cyclops thought to herself. She then looked over at Spider preparing with the other Exiles.

"Ok, let's save the world," Wolverine growled. "Again."

Cyclops began to outline the plan. "All right, the first team will move out to draw the symbiotes to Central Park. Then we'll contact you and the main team to attack Spider-Woman's hive. . . ." As she continued on, she noted Spider's eyes on her, and shivered internally.

~EXE~

As Cyclops outlined the plan, Nightwing noted Spider's dark glares in her direction. Even through his mask, the sheer acrimony of his body language gave him away. _What got into him?_ Nightwing wondered. _Is it the symbiote doing this to him? Was Iris right? Or is it something else? Something about Cyclops that's setting him off? And what could it be?_

He looked at Iris, and gently squeezed her hand. _Whatever it is, I'd better figure it out. _We'd_ better figure it out . . . before it's too late._


	6. Falling Inside the Black

Note: This is the conclusion of the "Web of Shadows" arc of The Other Exiles. Here, you see Spider face off with what he could have become . . . and might very well still become. Even if he wins . . . will it really count as a victory?

Disclaimer: The properties used in this story do not belong to us. They belong to Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Top Cow, Masashi Kishimoto, and Saban/Disney. We make no money whatsoever from this story and are merely doing this for fun.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 6: "Falling Inside the Black"

~EXE~

Cyclops and the others had reached Central Park as a large group of Symbiote Generals and Symbiote drones were attacking a large SHIELD Safe Zone. "Remember, we are here to buy enough time for Richards and Stark to plant the bomb and activate it," said Cyclops as Vulturlings dived towards her. She unleashed her optic blast and sent several flying.

"Enslave them all! Leave none standing against us!" screeched Symbiote Vulture as her Vulturlings dived toward the resistance forces.

"Spread out and delay them," ordered Cyclops as she fired another optic blast. She spotted a group of five Symbiote zombies moving towards a SHIELD agent and was ready to blast them as well when that agent tossed a sonic grenade into the crowd of Symbiotes. It exploded, emitting powerful sonic vibrations that freed the five civilians from the Symbiotes.

"Move to safety quickly; get in the Safe Zone!" the SHIELD agent shouted, guiding the five civilians towards the Safe Zone as Symbiote blobs started to advance on him. His response was to fire his gun, killing the blobs.

"Hope this works and the others can plant the Sonic Bomb," muttered the SHIELD agent as he watched more civilians freed from the Symbiote. The former symbiote hosts immediately moved towards the Safe Zones.

Sasuke Uchiha decided it was time to field-test his new jutsu. After forming the necessary hand seals, lightning chakra surrounded and engulfed his body, making him resemble a small-time hero called Living Lightning. His Sharingan flashed, and he began tearing through the symbiotes like wet toilet paper, his lightning aura like poison to them.

Tommy Oliver, morphed into the Green Ranger, played his Dragon Dagger. Its power shielded him from the symbiotes' attempts at bonding with him, and when he played a different tune, the power turned offensive, green lightning and flame lashing out at the symbiotes.

Sara wielded her Witchblade like the swift and terrible sword that it was, cutting through the symbiotes like wet tissues upon separating them from their hapless hosts. "You would make a fine host . . ." one of the symbiotes hissed, attempting to bond to her.

"Sorry, but I've already got someone in my life," Sara retorted, cutting the symbiote apart.

Rogue opted to use her strength to literally tear the symbiotes off their hosts. The pain the separation caused was more than enough to force the symbiotes off their hosts out of sheer self-preservation. Of course, it didn't help them very much when Rogue began tearing them apart herself. The symbiotes attempted to swarm Rogue, but Rogue fought them off.

Nightwing battled the Vulturlings and other Symbiotic warriors, while a Symbiote Rhino had Iris cornered and was stamping towards her. "You'll make an excellent host," snarled Symbiote Rhino.

Iris watched as Iron Fist stood in front of her and delivered a powerful punch that sent the Rhino flying. The chi-charged punch was strong enough to force the Symbiote to separate from Rhino's body.

"You ok?" asked Iron Fist, whirling to deliver another powerful punch to a Symbiote Zombie, which went flying. Getting her second wind, Iris sped toward another Symbiote Zombie and delivered a kinetically charged punch that sent her flying.

"Never better, but I don't think this is going well," Iris responded. "Do you?"

Meanwhile, Nightwing was surrounded by Vulturlings and Symbiote Vulture started laughing at his plight. At that moment a red, white and blue shield flew towards them, striking the Symbiotes one by one. Nightwing flew forward and tackled Symbiote Vulture into the ground as the famous shield returned to its owner Captain America.

"Thank you for the help," said Nightwing.

"No problem," answered Captain America and threw her shield. The shield struck the Symbiotes and knocked them for a loop. "Avengers Assemble!" The rallying cry brought the Avengers together while Captain America battled another Symbiote. With a mighty toss, she forced the Symbiote off her.

Wolverine herself was battling a large group Symbiotes when she caught the smell of her nemesis Sabretooth, now wearing a Symbiote suit. "Still fighting the pointless battle, runt?" Symbiote Sabretooth took the opportunity to mock her long-time foe.

"I'm gonna enjoy this, Creed," snarled Wolverine and released her claws. She started towards Sabretooth and the two of them started fighting, exchanging vicious claw swipes in between kicks and grapples.

As the fight went on, Wolverine's back ended up facing the Symbiote pods and, seeing an opportunity, Symbiote Sabretooth knocked Wolverine into one of the pods. The pod immediately consumed her, but before it could grip her mind and turn her into another warrior slave, a powerful sonic wave ripped the symbiote off Wolverine and killed it. The same thing happened to the other symbiotes, freeing their hosts in the process.

"We did it," Cyclops spoke stoically among the cheering superheroes.

~EXE~

Dr Richards and her squad had arrived at the seemingly unguarded Empire State Building. The teams entered the building, only to find Symbiote Bullseye standing there with her army of Symbiote soldiers. The assassin had a sharp-toothed grin that, if anything, was even more menacing than her normal bloodthirsty expression.

"She's mine, get moving," ordered the Punisher, firing her shotgun at a Symbiote, sending it flying. The others headed upstairs, fighting their way through Symbiote soldiers as the other Symbiote generals came after them.

At the very top, the penthouse level, Spider faced off against what could have been his mirror image, only with obvious feminine curves. While the gender-inverted twin Spiders battled, Dr. Richards and Iron Woman headed for the roof of the building.

"So you're the imposter wearing my suit," commented Spider-Woman acidly.

"Yeah, and you're the one that ruined this city and enslaved everyone here," retorted Spider.

"No, I made this city better, can't you see?" asked Spider-Woman.

"All we see is someone who forgot what our uncle said: 'With great power comes great responsibility,'" Spider rejoined harshly.

"Tell me, wouldn't you take power to protect those you love from the monsters we fight day in, day out?" Spider-Woman insisted, almost daring him. "Tell me you wouldn't take the power."

"We are nothing like you!" Spider roared, his voice taking on an inhuman cadence per his symbiote's influence. "We wouldn't sacrifice millions to protect the ones we love! We made a promise to our uncle to fight evil, not _become_ what we fight against!" With that declaration, Spider and Spider-Woman began to fight, but seeing as they were virtually the same person with a slight gender difference, they merely mirrored each other nearly perfectly.

"Tell us, why do you wear our suit? Tell us," Spider-Woman asked her male counterpart.

"For the friends and family we lost because we took the wrong side in a civil war for the right to be a superhero," Spider answered with sadness in his voice. "Because we made the wrong choice, the people we loved were killed by our former friends, and that's something we will live with for the rest of our life. For their sake, we won't let you hurt this world anymore!"

Spider and Spider-Woman continued trading blows and again they perfectly blocked each other's attacks. Unfortunately for Spider, Spider-Woman got in a lucky strike and sent him flying. She walked over to him and stood over his fallen frame.

"You can't beat me, you are dealing with yourself," taunted Spider-Woman.

"Think about what you're doing!" Spider answered. "You've betrayed everything our uncle taught us! Tell _me,_ what he would say to you if he could see everything you have become?" Rising to his feet, he and Spider-Woman resumed fighting each other. This time, Spider was the one to get in a lucky hit, knocking Spider-Woman down.

"You will be consumed by the darkness inside you," Spider-Woman hissed. "You will become what you despair the most. We are the same, you and I."

"No," Spider denied. "We are not the same, and we won't kill you. We only battled you to give them enough time to activate the bomb to save you and this entire city from the monster you created."

At that instant the building and the whole city was consumed by a powerful sonic wave. While the buildings that were still standing remained intact, the windows of many of those buildings shattered. All over the city, symbiotes screeched in agony as they were forced off their hapless hosts and disintegrated by the force of the sonic wave.

That included Spider-Woman, who was left in her original red-and-blue costume by the destruction of her symbiote. "What have I done?" she asked. "All those people . . . God, Matthew was right; the power really did turn me into a monster . . . I'm sorry . . ."

"Tell that to your friends, not us," Spider answered stoically as he walked away from her. He swung away on a web-line and rejoined his fellow Exiles. At that instant they were teleported away, back to the Crystal Palace.

~EXE~

"Not bad, you guys," Buffy remarked.

"Yeah . . ." Spider muttered, clearly disturbed by what he'd seen in that reality. "Not bad at all . . ."

Sara and Kitty looked at Spider sympathetically, while Sasuke and Tommy had no idea what to think. Tommy could slightly understand where Spider was coming from, though. Like the wall-crawler, he'd been granted great power, and now that power threatened to destroy him from within each time he drew upon it.

"Where're Nightwing and Flash?" Sara asked.

"I don't know," Kitty replied. She turned to Buffy. "Do you?"

Buffy had no answer for the assembled Exiles, whom she now noticed were two short. "Well. That's gonna be a problem."


	7. On the Count of Zero

Note: To all of you who have so patiently (or not so much) waited for this story to be resumed, I offer my sincerest apologies for taking so long with other stories. As you might be able to infer from the last chapter, there's going to be a slight shakeup in the Exiles' lineup. The team will be split, and they will be going in two separate directions; plus, you'll see an exciting new member from a cool new anime!

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Spider-Man and Rogue belong to Marvel Comics and Marvel Entertainment. Sasuke Uchiha belongs to Masashi Kishimoto and VIZ Entertainment. Nightwing and Kingdom Come's Flash belong to DC Comics and DC Entertainment. Sara Pezzini and her weapon the Witchblade belong to Top Cow Productions. The settings are merely altered versions of series belonging to people other than myself and JOUNOUCHI-sama, and we make no money or other profit from this story whatsoever.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 7: "On the Count of Zero"

~EXE~

"Where did they go?" Sara asked Buffy.

"Somewhere else," Buffy replied. "Look, I'll track them down, but right now you've got another mission."

"And what would that be?" Spider asked.

"First off," Buffy looked at Sasuke as she said this, "you've gotta go back home."

"But . . ." Sasuke uttered.

"You've done enough," Buffy replied, cutting him off. "Naruto will be waiting for you when you go back." With a snap of her fingers, Sasuke was gone.

"Did he really go back home?" Rogue asked.

"He did," Buffy answered.

"Now we're short three people," Tommy observed. "How are we supposed to keep going on these missions if there're only four of us?"

"Because I'm calling in reinforcements," Buffy replied. Just then, a young brown-haired man stepped into the Crystal Palace, a wary look on his harsh yet handsome features.

"Who's he?" Spider asked. "We don't think we've seen his show before."

"Kazuma Yagami," the young man replied. "Who are you?"

"We're Spider."

"The name's Rogue, sugar."

"Sara."

"Tommy."

"Kazuma here is a user of the Wind Arts, a subdivision of the Spirit Arts," Buffy explained. "Practitioners of those arts can use magic connected to elemental spirits, and even contract with the lords of those spirits for increased power should they need it. The Wind Arts are useful for recon missions, and Kazuma's pretty good at using them offensively."

"Pretty good?" Kazuma repeated with a snort. "That's not even the half of it."

"Whatever," Spider said. He looked at Buffy. "Where are we going?"

"You're going to my old stomping grounds, sort of," Buffy replied.

"Want us to pass a message to your friends?" Spider quipped.

"No, I want you to keep them from getting killed," Buffy answered bluntly. "Anyway, it's time for you to go. Good luck."

~EXE~

"Where are we?" Iris West II, the Flash of her reality, asked.

"I don't know," Nightwing replied. "It looks like home, but something's off about it."

"Home?" Iris repeated. "You mean my world or yours?"

"I don't think it's either, but it looks a lot like the world I'm familiar with," Nightwing answered. "Let's check it out."

The duo dashed across the city at super-speed, their movements invisible to any onlookers and incomprehensible as anything except a sudden breeze. "It's so peaceful . . ." Iris commented, awestruck.

"Too peaceful," Nightwing amended grimly.

At that moment, the Flash stopped in front of them. "Who are you guys?" he asked.

"Barry?" Nightwing repeated, looking into this Flash's blue eyes. "Is that you?"

"You know me?" the Flash, Barry Allen, asked.

"Grandpa?" Iris, also the Flash, asked.

"Do I know you, miss?" Barry asked.

"Sort of," Iris replied. "You mentored my father when he got powers like ours."

Barry thought about it, and then his eyes glittered with realization. "Wally? You know Wally?"

"Yeah, he's my dad," Iris replied.

"You must be from the future," Barry remarked. "What's your name?"

"Iris West, the Flash," Iris replied.

"I'm Nightwing," Nightwing answered.

Barry looked at them curiously. "Any relation to Superman? Because 'Nightwing' came from a Kryptonian legend."

"It's a long story," Nightwing answered. "Can you get us to the Justice League? We need to talk."

Barry pondered that for a moment. "You look familiar. Any relation to Robin?"

"I used to be Robin," Nightwing admitted. "Why?"

Barry pondered that as well. "We'd better get you two to the League. Maybe we can sort this all out."

~EXE~

Spider looked at a sign that said, "The Bronze." He snorted briefly. "Nice name," he remarked sardonically.

"This is America, right?" Kazuma asked.

"Yeah," Tommy replied. "We're in California. At least, that's what it looks like."

"Can you two change into something else?" Sara asked Rogue and Spider. "You'll both stick out like sore thumbs like you are now."

"We can," Spider replied, his symbiotic costume morphing into a black leather jacket over a dark blue shirt and even darker blue jeans, revealing the boyishly handsome face of a brown-haired man who was unfortunately scowling.

"Well, if anyone asks, I'll just say I'm playing dress-up," Rogue replied.

"I think they call it 'cosplay,'" Spider interjected.

"Cosplay?" Rogue asked.

"You know, how anime fans dress up like their favorite characters," Spider replied.

"Hey, you actually referred to yourself in the first-person singular," Sara commented.

"The symbiote doesn't have as much pull on me when I'm like this," Spider explained. "Anyway, let's go in and have ourselves a ball. Maybe we'll figure out what the hell's going on."

Thus, they went inside the club, seeing people playing pool, sipping drinks, or dancing to club music. The lights were somewhat dim, with plenty of shadows to show for it, enough to get some mischief done. The group of five moved through the club, looking for some seats.

"Hey, you know where we are?" Tommy asked a random club patron.

"The Bronze, man," the patron replied, snorting at Tommy's apparent stupidity.

"I mean what city we're in," Tommy clarified.

"Man, you must have hit your head pretty hard on the way here," the patron remarked. "You're in Sunnydale, home base of the wacky and weird."

"Thanks," Tommy said. "Sorry to bother you."

"Hey, I think that guy's looking at you," Rogue whispered to Sara.

"Yeah, but there's something off about him," Sara whispered back.

"I'll say," Kazuma agreed. "He reeks of yoma."

"Yoma?" Rogue repeated warily.

"They're evil spirits that possess humans and give them power while consuming their souls," Kazuma explained. "I fight them all the time in my reality."

"So that's what the Witchblade was sensing," Sara murmured.

Spider had already sat down, casually sipping a drink when he saw a leather-jacketed girl come up to him, one that looked strangely like Eliza Dushku. "Hey," she greeted him. "Looking for a good time?"

"Depends," Spider replied. "What's your definition of a good time?"

"You wanna play it like that, huh?" she asked. "Fine, we can play. My definition of a good time is you, me, and somewhere we can be alone to get down with our bad selves."

Spider smirked. "Well, the blunt honesty is refreshing . . . and you are kind of good-looking."

The girl snorted. "Playing hard to get?"

"Who says I'm playing?" Spider asked.

"Hey, don't look now, but somebody looks a little interested in Spider," Sara remarked. "She doesn't seem normal, though."

"Of course not," Rogue muttered with a hint of jealousy in her voice.

"Jealous?" Kazuma asked sardonically. "Then why don't you go up and deal with her?"

"I might break the bitch in two," Rogue muttered.

"I don't think it'll be that easy," Sara murmured. "The Witchblade is sensing something off with her, too."

"Like that guy who was eyeing you?" Rogue asked. "The yoma guy?"

"No, it's a little different with her," Sara amended.

Back with Spider and the mysterious girl, Spider decided to make a game of guessing her name. "Hmm . . . your name wouldn't be Faith Lehane, would it?"

Faith started. "How do you know about me?"

"You'd be surprised what we creatures of fiction know about each other," Spider answered with an amused smile. "Now, since I know your name and you don't seem to be the kind of girl who reads comic books, I'll let you know mine. Peter Parker."

Faith laughed. "You're Spider-Man? Seriously?"

"It's just Spider now," Spider amended. "And I'm not crazy, Faith. There's trouble coming here, and some friends and I aim to stop it."

"Who would those friends be, the X-Men?" Faith asked mockingly. "The Avengers?"

"You were kind of right on the first count," Spider answered. "One of my friends is an X-Man. The others . . . well, you probably wouldn't believe me, anyway."

"Try me," Faith challenged.

~EXE~

Back in the reality where Nightwing and Iris had ended up, the duo had been escorted to the Justice League's headquarters by Barry Allen. All the while, Nightwing couldn't help but think to himself that something was very wrong with this universe. It seemed too peaceful, too . . . _happy _to be real. Maybe it was just the cynicism he'd long denied but had picked up from his mentor's influence, but he had the feeling that wasn't entirely so. And he trusted his feelings.

At the moment, he and Iris were in front of the Justice League, consisting of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Hal Jordan, Black Canary, Martian Manhunter, and Barry Allen. Batman looked at the two with unconcealed suspicion. "Who are you?"

"Nightwing. This is the Flash. We're from different universes."

"That would explain you wearing Superman's symbol," Batman commented. "And why this Flash resembles a female Kid Flash."

Iris looked at Batman. "Wow, someone has issues."

Batman just scowled. "Why are you here?"

"We don't know," Nightwing admitted. "We were on a mission with people from other worlds, just like us, and we ended up here instead of where we were supposed to be recalled."

"Then we'll find a way to get you back to where you came from," Superman said. He looked at Hal. "Can you scan them?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Hal replied, and his GL ring activated, giving the two the onceover. "They're telling the truth. They are from alternate universes; their vibratory frequencies don't match this universe's frequency."

"Makes sense," Barry remarked. "Should I use the Cosmic Treadmill to help them find their way back?"

"That would be a good idea," Batman replied. "Their worlds need them more than ours does."

"I have one question," Nightwing said. "What happened to the Titans here?"

"They broke up," Wonder Woman admitted. "Personal differences. At least, that's what Wonder Girl told me."

"Seriously?" Nightwing asked. "But we . . . we're . . ." He scoffed at himself. "Why am I surprised? We break up and come back to each other all the time. Is everyone ok?"

"Yeah," Green Arrow replied. "Speedy's just fine."

"Speedy?" Nightwing repeated. "He hasn't used that name in . . ."

"Not in your world, maybe," Batman cut in.

Bringing him back to reality was Iris's hand on his arm. "Nightwing."

"I know," Nightwing murmured. "Just . . . what's going on here?"

"Green Lantern will escort you to some guest quarters," Batman said.

Hal nodded and escorted the two reality jumpers out of the Justice League War Room. "What happened?" Nightwing asked.

Hal sighed. "It was growing pains. That happens with young people a lot, particularly when they spend so much time together."

Nightwing chuckled ruefully. "How is everybody?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" Hal asked. "It's not like they're exactly the same people you grew up with."

"Just tell me," Nightwing insisted. "Please."

Relenting at the sight of Nightwing's desperation, Hal continued. "Robin's in a city called Bludhaven. Speedy is with Checkmate. Kid Flash moved to Keystone City, the old stomping grounds of the Justice Society's Flash. Aqualad went back to Atlantis. Wonder Girl got married and opened some shelters for troubled children. Beast Boy is a minor celebrity . . ."

"Are they happy?" Nightwing asked.

"As far as I can tell," Hal replied.

Nightwing couldn't help the feeling that something wasn't quite right, but he swallowed it for now. They all sounded happy, happier than they'd ever been in his world. "I'm glad, then," he murmured.

~EXE~

On their way to Buffy Summers' house, the Exiles and Faith had encountered some vampires. To Faith's surprise, Spider had just butchered them without stopping his forward movement once. To Spider's surprise, they'd just burst into dust after he'd gotten through with them.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Spider had remarked unconcernedly.

"I guess you are the genuine article," Faith mused. "Although isn't Spider-Man supposed to be against killing?"

"They're undead horrors that prey on human beings," Spider replied.

"Point taken," Faith said. "Just thought somebody as goody-goody as you would freak about that sort of thing."

Spider chuckled bitterly. "I'm not such a good guy these days, Faith."

"I think we can all see that," Faith remarked. "So . . . you're all from alternate realities? Guess that explains how one of you's an honest-to-God Power Ranger."

When they got to Buffy's house, Faith knocked on the door. Answering the knock was a tall girl with long brown hair and clear blue eyes. "Hey, Faith," she greeted. Then she looked over Faith's shoulder. "Who are those guys? And why's one of them dressed up like Rogue from the X-Men?"

"I'll explain when we get inside, Dawn," Faith replied.

"Sure," Dawn assented somewhat warily, letting them in.

"Faith, what are you doing bringing these people in?" a petite, pretty blonde whom the Exiles recognized as Buffy asked her fellow Slayer.

"Long story," Faith replied.

"Make it short," Buffy retorted.

"They all claim to be from alternate realities, different ones for each of them, and they say they're here to save this world from something," Faith explained.

"How can you be sure they're not agents of the First?" Buffy asked.

"The First?" Sara echoed. "Pompous name."

"Bastard's serious about being the First," a bleached-blond man in a leather duster corrected, his voice tinged with a rough British accent. "First Evil, that is."

"So what, Spiky, he's basically the source and incarnation of all the evil there is in the world?" Spider asked. "Heard a lot of bad guys claim that one."

"It's _Spike._"

"No, he _really_ is, and who are you, anyway?" Buffy asked.

"Spider."

"Rogue."

"Sara."

"Kazuma."

"Tommy."

It was at that moment that a slight, somewhat geeky young man with spiky blond hair came in. "Oh, my God! It's the Witchblade!"

"Witchblade?" Buffy asked.

"I'm Sara," Sara said. "The Witchblade is my weapon. And how do you even know about that?"

"I'm sorry, I've just read the comics . . . and you look just like her!" the young man sputtered.

"Comics?" Sara repeated suspiciously.

"We're fiction here," Spider explained. "Just like they're fiction in our worlds, I think. That's Andrew, former member of the Dork Trio, pawn of the First, currently a prisoner of the Scooby Gang so they can plunder his brain for useful information about the First, and of dubious orientation."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Andrew asked. "I like women."

"Yeah, sure," a dark-haired young man remarked sardonically. "So who are you guys, anyway?"

"I'm Spider, Stripes here is Rogue, the guy in the jacket's Kazuma, the kid in green's Tommy, and the lady with the bracelet's Sara," Spider introduced. "I'm sure any of the comic book geeks here could identify us."

The dark-haired young man, Xander, looked at Spider and Rogue. "Hey, how come Rogue looks like Shadowcat?"

"Complicated story, sugar," Rogue replied.

"And even sounds like Shadowcat, aside from the cute Southern accent," Xander remarked. He turned to Spider. "You're calling yourself Spider, right? As in Spider-Man?"

"Spider-Man's dead," Spider snapped. "It's just Spider now."

"Great, you're going through your dark phase again," Xander moaned. "God, I hated when that happened."

"Where's Willow?" Spider asked.

Xander immediately turned glum, as did Buffy and Dawn and Faith and Andrew. "Something I said?" Spider asked.

"You're a real prat, bringing that up," Spike answered glumly.

"She's . . . she's gone," Xander said.

"And by gone you mean dead," Spider filled in.

"Yeah," Buffy confirmed sadly.

"She's an uber-witch, how the hell did she die?" Spider asked.

The group of six looked at each other, unsure of how to explain this unfortunate happening. They were saved from it by a small group of the teenage girls staying with them, the Potential Slayers, coming in. "Hey, who are you guys?" a redhead named Vi asked.

"We gotta go through this again?" Kazuma asked irritably.

"Yeah, we do," Spider replied.

"They're comic book characters from alternate universes," Faith explained. "The guy in the leather jacket's Spider-Man (no, sorry, _Spider_), the lady with the weird bracelet's Sara and that bracelet's the Witchblade when it's inactive, the guy with the attitude's Kazuma, the girl dressed up like Rogue _is_ apparently Shadowcat with Rogue's powers, and the guy in green is the original Green Power Ranger."

"Original?" Tommy repeated. "You mean there are other Rangers?"

"Yeah," Faith replied.

"So what are you all doing here?" a brunette girl asked them.

"We're here to save this world, and if Willow's dead, this world needs serious saving," Spider replied.

"Got that in one," Xander muttered.

"What are we gonna do with these guys?" Dawn asked.

"They can stay with the Potentials," Buffy replied.

"What about the guys?" one of the girls asked.

"We won't look," Kazuma replied. "Besides, most of you aren't even my type, and these two –" he pointed out Tommy and Spider "– would rather self-flagellate than think about trying anything with you."

"Fine," Buffy said. She moved to whisper in Faith's ear. "I want them watched."

"Gee, B, you think they'll try anything with the girls?" Faith whispered back.

"If they're agents of the First, yeah," Buffy answered. "Watch them."

"On it, B," Faith replied.

"Hey, wait, how about these guys prove who they are?" Andrew asked. "If they are who they say they are."

"You wanna see?" Spider asked. A black web-line snatched Andrew and zipped up to the ceiling, where Andrew was pinned under more webbing. Spider climbed up onto the ceiling and smirked at Andrew. "Seen enough?"

"Well, that's one way to keep the ponce out of trouble," Spike mused.

"Spider, do you have to be that mean?" Rogue asked.

"He annoys us," Spider replied.

"Hey, if you can make the webs, can you make that black costume?" Andrew asked.

Spider let go of the ceiling and as he dropped, his clothes shifted into the familiar form of the black costume. "Proved enough?"

"Proved you," Buffy replied. "Not the others."

"Hey, wait, you're talking like Venom!" Andrew observed.

"We're not Venom," Spider answered coldly. "Venom's dead."

Rogue floated off the ground and up to Andrew, where she ripped the webbing off him and gently hoisted him down. "I can't believe it! I was actually touched by Rogue! Well, some kind of Rogue-Shadowcat hybrid, but still counts!"

"You've never been laid once in your life, have you?" Spike mocked.

"Your turn," Buffy said, looking at Sara, Tommy, and Kazuma.

Tommy pulled out his Power Morpher, with the Green Dragon Power Coin shining brightly in its center. "It looks so real . . ." Andrew uttered in astonishment.

"It is," Tommy replied, before thrusting it out. "It's morphin' time!"

A spark of green flame grew from the morpher, engulfing Tommy and clearing to reveal the familiar armor of the Green Power Ranger. "You know . . . it looks a lot less ridiculous up close," one of the Potentials observed.

"He makes it work for him, I think," another Potential commented.

Tommy powered down, his armor dissipating in fiery green mist. "I don't like doing that unless I have to. Zordon's rule: Never use the Power irresponsibly."

"You look like a damn ponce in all that spandex and gold bling," Spike commented.

"Thanks," Tommy answered sardonically.

Sara let the metal that composed the Witchblade expand over her body, forming spiky metal armor that clung tightly to her womanly curves. "There. Happy?"

"And what about you, sunshine?" Buffy asked Kazuma.

"Wind Art User," Kazuma replied.

Dawn covered her arms. "It's really drafty in here."

"Are all the windows closed?" Andrew asked.

"Yeah, they're closed," Buffy replied. Then she noticed that her shirt had risen far enough up her midriff to expose her navel. "What the –? Is that you, Kazuma?"

Spike snickered slightly. "Looks like the boy fancies you."

"I think I've proven myself, or do you want me to jump through more hoops for you?" Kazuma asked with a slight smirk, before stopping the wind.

Buffy scowled at Kazuma before walking up to Spike and whispering to him, "I want you and Faith to watch those guys."

"Sure thing," Spike muttered. "Just me and her in the same room as a bunch of spandex-wearing ponces. That'll be fun."


	8. Secrets Held Aflame

Note: Sorry for being away from this story for so many months. First, I was busy with other stories, but that's mainly because I couldn't come up with anything for this one. Fortunately for us all, JOUNOUCHI-sama showed me the way and now I am ready to give you, my devoted readership, the eighth chapter of "The Other Exiles!"

Now, Nightwing and Iris West have landed in a seemingly idyllic version of the DC Universe. Barry Allen is still alive, Hal is still Green Lantern, Ollie and Dinah are still together . . . and the Titans have broken up! Something isn't quite right with that picture, but what could it be, and what will Nightwing and Iris discover that will really change how they look at this brand new world?

Meanwhile, the rest of the Exiles, with their new comrade Kazuma of the anime _Kaze no Stigma,_ have ventured into an alternate version of the Buffyverse where Willow is dead. Why is Willow dead, and what relation does it have to the Omniverse's Buffy? For the answer to those questions and others, read on!

Disclaimer: The characters of Spider and Rogue belong to Marvel. Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger, belongs to Saban. Sara and her Witchblade belong to Top Cow. Kazuma belongs to the creators of _Kaze no Stigma._ Nightwing and Iris belong to DC Comics. Buffy and company belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions. The only versions of them we own are the versions we made up for this story, which is completely non-canon to the multiple series they originated from, and we make no money whatsoever from this story. This is only for fun.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 8: "Secrets Held Aflame"

~EXE~

Spike stared up at the corner of the ceiling where Spider rested, fused there by a coffin of black webbing. "Who the hell does he think he is, bloody Dracula?"

"Maybe that's his way of saying he doesn't want to be bothered while he's sleeping," Faith jibed.

"Bloody ponce," Spike muttered. "He's almost as bad as Angel."

"He's got his reasons," Rogue defended.

"Sweet on the lad, aren't you?" Spike commented.

Whatever Rogue had been about to say died on her lips at Spike's comment. What could she say to tell him that it wasn't so, to deny her own feelings for this tormented version of her longtime friend? She settled for a huff and a harsh, "None of your damn business."

Spike chuckled, while Faith slapped his chest with the back of her hand. "Don't mind him," she said. "He likes getting under people's skin, messing with their heads."

"Can't call it messing with their heads if it's the truth, love," Spike remarked.

"Yeah, whatever," Faith brushed him off.

Sara, Tommy, and Kazuma were busy sleeping, or trying to sleep, at any rate. Tommy's expression contorted with pain, as though he were reliving some awful memory. Given his past, he very well might have been. Sara didn't seem to be having such a peaceful slumber herself, if all her tossing and turning on the sleeping mat was anything to go by. Kazuma was just staring up at the ceiling with what amounted to a carefully blank expression.

"So what's his damage?" Spike asked, and his question sounded like it could have been meant for either Spider or Kazuma. It was Kazuma who answered, though.

"It's none of your business, bloodsucker."

"You got a problem with vampires, buddy?"

"I got a problem with demons, and right now I got two of them watching over me."

"Him, yeah," Faith said. "But who else are you talking about?"

"You," Kazuma replied. "I can sense demons. He's got one in him, reanimating his body. You've got one, too. Same one Buffy's got, but yours and hers is probably connected to that entire line of Slayers. That's why you can fight them."

"What are you talking about?" Faith asked.

Kazuma chuckled. "Figure it out."

"Slayers are still human," Spike cut in. "That's the difference between them and me."

"But you have a human soul somehow," Kazuma remarked. "It shares your body with the demon."

"Funny thing, that," Spike commented. "But you've done enough messing around with us. How about I mess with you a bit? See what's going on inside your head, pretty boy?"

Kazuma glared. "Try it."

"I bet . . . you're in love with a girl," Spike surmised. "And that girl . . . is dead . . . because of you."

Kazuma glared at Spike. "Shut up."

"Oh, did I get it too on the nose?" Spike taunted.

Kazuma lunged at Spike, wind swirling around his outstretched arm for a punch that would slice the platinum blond vampire to bits. Spike managed to dodge, but the wind attack coordinated with Kazuma's punch still left deep gouges in his upper body. Rogue grabbed Kazuma in an attempt to hold him back from killing Spike, but Kazuma used the sheer force of wind pressure to push her off him. Faith drew her knife, the one she saved for "special" threats.

At that moment, Sara awoke, the Witchblade armor having formed over her body. The way her eyes were glowing, though, it might not have been entirely Sara that was awakened, as she was licking her lips perversely. "I smell blood," she whispered. She turned to Kazuma and smirked. "Was that your doing?"

Kazuma snarled and prepared for another attack when Buffy, Dawn, Giles, and Xander stormed downstairs. "Should have known these guys couldn't be trusted," Xander remarked.

"What's going on here?" Buffy asked.

Kazuma glared at Spike. "Bastard . . . should have kept his mouth shut."

"Shouldn't be so sensitive," Spike remarked unrepentantly. He looked at Buffy and Giles. "Boy was talking crazy about Slayers being part demon themselves. Either of you know what he was talking about?"

By this point, the Potentials were awake, staring at the bleeding Spike, the knife-wielding Faith, the glaring Kazuma, the Witchblade-armored Sara, the hovering Rogue, and the newly risen Tommy, along with Buffy and the others. It was Kennedy, however, who voiced what the other Potentials were thinking.

"So what the hell's this, dick-measuring night?"

Kennedy went ignored, while Sara stretched sinuously, preparing herself for a fight. "Sorry, girl, but there's not going to be a fight," Rogue said to the other female Exile.

"Disappointing," Sara murmured. "I was so turned on, too."

Faith chuckled. "You and I . . . we might just get along great."

"Why is nobody answering the question at hand?" Giles asked.

"To make a long story short, Spike and Kazuma were testing the waters with each other when Spike went and said something about Kazuma's girl being dead on account of him," Rogue replied. "Kazuma flipped his lid and tried to wreck Spike, hence Spike being all ripped up and stuff."

"Glad I wasn't wearing my favorite jacket," Spike commented. "Boy would have really had to pay, then."

Dawn looked up at the black web coffin resting in the far corner of the ceiling. "That's kind of creepy."

"That's Spider," Rogue quipped.

"I suppose we will have to stay here and keep watch to ensure no further conflicts ensue," Giles remarked.

"Yeah, that'd be a good idea," Xander agreed. "In the meantime, someone's gonna have to do something about Spike, because he can't be bleeding all over the house."

"So glad you care," Spike drawled sarcastically.

~EXE~

Elsewhere in the Omniverse, Nightwing and Iris had decided to track down some of Nightwing's old friends, just to see what was going on. First on their list was Roy Harper, who in this world had never given up the Speedy identity and had apparently never gotten addicted to heroin. Nightwing guessed Ollie had been a better father figure to him in this world than he had been in the reality Nightwing was familiar with.

Speaking of Ollie, they found him and Dinah playing with a young girl. She had a miniature bow and arrow set and Ollie seemed to be showing her how to use it. "Hey," Nightwing greeted.

The little girl looked up at him and Iris. "Hi!" she greeted brightly.

"Hey . . . you must be that Nightwing guy," Ollie greeted. "You might wanna be careful, though; I have an identity to protect."

"What identity, Grandpa Ollie?" Iris asked.

"Grandpa?" Ollie repeated with mock offense. "I'm not even 40 yet!"

"The beard does make you look older," Nightwing remarked. "So who's the cute little girl with you?"

"Olivia," Dinah replied with a bright smile.

"She's got your eyes," Nightwing observed. "Is she your daughter?"

"Yeah," Dinah answered. "Best thing that happened to us."

"Roy must love being a big brother, huh?" Nightwing commented.

Ollie looked startled at first, but then he remembered. "I forgot. He's your best friend where you come from."

"Yeah," Nightwing admitted. "Best friend I ever had, even if I didn't always deserve it." He smiled. "So where is he?"

"On patrol," Ollie replied. "You wanna go talk to him?"

"Yeah, that'd be great," Nightwing answered. "Don't worry. We'll be able to find him."

Ollie looked carefully at Iris. "You must be from another world."

"Why's that?" Iris asked.

"Because I don't see Wally settling down to have kids in this world," Ollie replied sardonically.

Iris laughed, and Nightwing had to admit it was a pretty lovely sound. "Thanks, Ollie. See you later, Livy!" With that, both world jumpers dashed away so quickly they weren't even blurs to Ollie and Dinah's eyes.

"That was a nice man," Olivia remarked, looking up from her bow and arrow set.

"Yeah," Ollie agreed. "Kid's far nicer than his dad, that's for sure."

~EXE~

Nightwing and Iris found themselves in Gotham after their trip through Star City. Talking with Roy had been . . . unsettling. He'd seemed a lot happier, a lot lighter, than the Roy Nightwing was familiar with. While Nightwing was happy that this Roy was happier, he couldn't help but feel some dissonance between that Roy and the Roy he knew.

However, that was nothing compared to the dissonance he found when he entered Gotham. It was not bright and shiny like Metropolis – never had been, never would be. It was, though, a lot cleaner than the Gotham he was familiar with, and the neon signs that seemed to be everywhere were startling to his eyes.

"Wow," Iris uttered. "Gotham's . . . pretty."

"Yeah," Nightwing agreed stoically. "Too pretty."

"You're starting to sound like Tommy," Iris grumbled.

"Which one?" Nightwing asked.

"Batman-Tommy," Iris replied.

"Nightwing . . ." Batman's voice called from within a particularly dark shadow. His voice came again, this time low enough so that only Nightwing's abnormally sensitive hearing could pick it up. "Dick."

Nightwing darted to Batman. "You know me?"

"Yes," Batman replied. "I recognized your face. You're suspicious of this world, aren't you?"

"I'm sorry, but . . . it just seems so perfect," Nightwing admitted. "Too perfect."

"You're right," Batman growled. "It is too perfect."

"You have any idea how that happened?" Nightwing inquired.

"I suspect someone's tampered with reality on a fundamental level," Batman explained. "Rewritten this world to fit their desires, and I have a list of potentials that would have the means to do something like that. You'd have to come with me to the cave."

"You mind if Iris comes with us?" Nightwing asked.

"No," Batman replied. "She can come. Just make sure she doesn't know what's above the cave."

"It's not like I don't already know," Iris drawled. "Don't worry, Bats, I can keep a secret."

~EXE~

In another time, another world, Buffy was staring at the black web cocoon Spider had placed himself in. "That is so creepy," she said.

"Yeah," Xander agreed. "Does he think he's Dracula?"

"That's what I said," Spike grumbled, bandages wrapped around his wounds.

Buffy looked at Kazuma. "You are going to behave yourself, right?"

"Of course I will," Kazuma replied with a smirk.

_Why is it that I get the mysterious smirking guys on my case?_ Buffy wondered irritably.

"So what's the what?" Faith asked. "You guys are all from alternate worlds and you're here to save this one?"

"Yeah," Rogue replied. "What of it, sugar?"

Tommy looked at Sara, who was looking at Kennedy, who was looking back at Sara with a strange look in her eyes. Sara wasn't exactly doing anything to stop those strange looks; hell, she was giving them right back.

"Are you two sexing each other with your eyes?" Kazuma asked. "Because that's kinda hot."

Kennedy glared at Kazuma. "Perv."

"Your point?" Kazuma rejoined.

At that moment, Spider burst out of his cocoon in full symbiotic armor . . . just in time for an arrow to shatter the window and enter Spike's heart. Spike had just enough time to swear as he realized how he'd been felled . . . and then turned to dust.

"Spike!" Dawn cried out.

Spider shot a web through the shattered window and pulled a red-and-black-costumed man inside. "Bull's-eye, baby!" the man shouted. "Hey, hey, don't be sad, cutie pie! He'll be back in Smallville and Torchwood! He's even pansexual in Torchwood, just perfect if you're the kind of fangirl that digs a little man-on-man!"

"Deadpool!" Rogue shouted. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I got orders from the boss," Deadpool replied airily. Then he started singing as he pointed his gun at Rogue. "You got the best of both worlds! / Chill it out, take it slow, then you rock out the show! / You got the best of both worlds! / Mix it all together and you know you got the best of both worlds!"

"You . . . are . . . an . . . idiot," a sour female voice commented, as the girl that voice belonged to stepped inside. She was quite beautiful, albeit half her face was concealed by half a metal mask. The half of her face that was exposed had a singular green eye and a cold smirk framed by long white hair. She wore tight black leather with gray chainmail covering her sides, shoulders, and arms – which would have been otherwise exposed by her attire.

"What? I like Hannah Montana," Deadpool answered unrepentantly.

"Gag me with a spoon," the leather-clad, half-masked girl grumbled. "You're even dumber than Beast Boy."

"Don't compare me to Greenie!" Deadpool protested. "I'm one of a kind!"

"No, you're just a rip-off of my father," the girl retorted. "Uncle Wade."

"And we thought we were insane," Spider muttered.

"Who are you?" Tommy asked.

"Name's Ravager, pretty boy," the white-haired girl replied almost seductively. "What's yours?"

Then they heard something quite . . . chilling.

"EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

"This is not good," Giles uttered, his tone suggesting he recognized the voice.

"What is that?" Xander asked.

"It's a freaking Dalek from Doctor Who!" Andrew shouted in panic.

That was when Andrew got shot by that same deadly tin can. "EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" the unholy metal abomination shouted as it rolled into the Summers house.

Spider's response was to shoot it with impact webbing, only for all of his web bullets to bounce off the Dalek. "Well, the direct approach should work better."

"Let me, Spider." Rogue stepped in front of him and flew at the Dalek, punching it. Unfortunately, her fist failed to make even the slightest dent in the Dalek.

"Oh, come on!" shouted a brash male voice. "Why should we let the tin can have all the fun? We got killing to do!"

"You'll have your chance, Jeagerjaquez," a calmer male voice tried to admonish the brasher of the two.

"Screw that," a twisted mechanical voice said. "I smell a Red Ranger, and I'm gonna kill him!"

At that moment, a red blur lunged into the house, only to be blocked by Sara's Witchblade, which had engulfed her whole body. "Who are you?" she asked.

Now that the blur had stopped, the figure was visible as a humanoid in twisted black armor with red framing his torso and accenting his helmet around the visor. His forearms were encased in white bracers with red highlights, and his hands were covered by black gauntlets with multiple silver studs. He wore black boots with armored white cuffs highlighted in red, as well as a white belt with an "N"-buckle in the center.

"I'm Psycho Red," the armored figure snarled. "And I'm here for that Red Ranger over there." He pointed at Tommy.

"I'm the _Green_ Ranger," Tommy corrected.

"For now you are," Psycho Red replied. "But in the future, you become a Red Ranger, and I was created to destroy the Red Ranger – _all_ Red Rangers!"

Tommy thrust out his Power Morpher in preparation to defend himself. "It's morphin' time! Dragonzord!" Green flame and lightning clashed around Tommy, ultimately dispersing to reveal that his Power Ranger armor had replaced his clothes.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" the brash male voice shouted before a brutal kick to the stomach knocked the Green Ranger through several walls. Standing where Tommy had been was a blue-haired, muscular man with his bare chest revealed by a white jacket and a jawbone-like armor covering the right side of his face. The man bounced on his heels, a manic gleam in his dark blue eyes. "Who wants to be next?"

~EXE~

In another world, Dick Grayson and Iris West II were in the Batcave, watching as Batman cautiously added up the incongruous events in this world. "There was a man named Hank Henshaw," Batman said. "He transferred himself into a clone of Superman with extensive cybernetic modifications to stabilize the process, and attempted to pass himself off as a new, better Superman. When we foiled his ruse, he tried to take it out on Metropolis, and Coast City was very nearly destroyed in the process."

"What about Barbara?" Dick asked.

"She's still Batgirl, in case you were wondering," Batman replied. "Joker visited her apartment . . . got himself quite the beating for it. The gun in his hand got off one shot, and it just grazed her shoulder."

"What about . . . Jason Todd?" Dick asked.

"Who?" Batman asked.

"Never mind, I must still be Robin in this universe," Dick tried to brush it off.

"Who was he?" Batman inquired.

"Another Robin," Dick answered. "The one that succeeded me after I became Nightwing. He . . . didn't have such a good time of things."

"Sounds like you have regrets," Batman remarked.

"Everybody does," Dick brushed it off again.

"What about my dad?" Iris asked.

"Kid Flash?" Batman deduced. "He's in Keystone City, mentoring with Jay Garrick."

"And Donna?" Dick wondered.

"On Themyscira," Batman responded. "And if you're wondering about Aqualad, he's in Atlantis."

"What about Cyborg? Victor Stone?" Dick inquired.

"He's a top college athlete, on the verge of going professional," Batman replied. "As far as I know, he has no cybernetics in his body whatsoever."

"Seems like everyone got a happy ending . . ." Dick murmured.

"What about Barry Allen?" Iris asked.

"Iris West is currently Iris West-Allen," Batman replied. "She's also pregnant with twins."

"And Hal?" Dick prompted.

"Dating Carol Ferris, on and off," Batman replied. "He loves her, but he's a longtime playboy and habits like that are somewhat difficult to shake."

"You'd know, wouldn't you?" Dick joked.

Batman stared at him. "Are you just going to ask about everybody you know in your world?"

"Yeah, we'd better get to the more important things," Dick conceded. "You said you had your suspicions. What triggered them?"

"Nobody has aged, at least not in any meaningful way," Batman replied. "Most of it could be chalked up to superpowers or exceptional physical conditioning, but Hal . . . he's as young as ever . . . except for the white streaks in his hair."

"Yeah, I noticed," Dick commented. "Maybe he's just going gray early. Or it's hair dye to make himself look more distinguished."

"Doctor Fate talked to me," Batman interrupted. "He doesn't know who's done it, but he knows someone has twisted and unbalanced reality . . . and the center of the distortion is Coast City."

Dick's eyes widened with realization. The destruction of Coast City had been where Hal Jordan's fall from grace began, and it was prevented in this world. He then remembered what the fallen Hal Jordan had attempted to do in response to that tragedy, and a shiver passed through him.

"Parallax . . ."

"Para-who?" Iris prompted.

"Parallax," Dick repeated, his tone harshening. "He succeeded. In this world, he succeeded."

"Succeeded in what?" Batman prompted.

Before Dick could answer, the Watchtower alarm went off inside the Batcave. "Batman to Watchtower, what's your status?" Batman asked over the communications line.

"_Green Lantern is under attack,"_ the Martian Manhunter responded over the link.

"Where and who, J'onn?" Batman interrogated.

"_The attack started in Coast City, and the attacker seems to be some kind of morphing shadow with glowing green eyes,"_ J'onn explained. _"Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Superman are en route to help Green Lantern, and I have already sent a distress signal to alert the rest of the League."_

"Rendezvous with us as soon as possible," Batman ordered. "I'm going in. Batman out."

Ending the transmission, Batman stood up from behind the computer screen and turned to Dick and Iris. "You two are coming with me."

Dick nodded briefly before slipping on his domino mask to "become" Nightwing. Iris put on her speed goggles, slipping into her familiar role as the Flash of her world. "Let's go." Nightwing and Iris dashed away toward Coast City, internally preparing for the battle to come.

_Just what is happening here?_ Nightwing wondered.


	9. Drifting Like Dust

Disclaimer: The characters and related properties depicted in this story are the creative property of DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Top Cow Productions, Saban Brands, Ltd., VIZ Media, Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, and others I cannot quite recall right now. Neither I nor JOUNOUCHI-sama make any monetary profit or receive any form of material compensation for the writing of this story; our satisfaction lies chiefly in the knowledge that it has a readership base.

Author's note: Thank you, Cloud Link Zero, for inspiring us to work on this story again and take it off the hiatus pile. Your contributions are very much appreciated and will be displayed in full bloom in later arcs of this story. Also, sincere apologies to everyone who waited all this time for this story to get picked up again, with sincere promises to atone with the most amount of ass-kicking we can put in this chapter.

Speaking of ass-kicking, the Exiles are going to run into some very familiar faces in both the alternate Buffyverse and the alternate Zero Hour reality, but will those faces be friendly . . . or not? And when the truth is discovered about the new Zero Hour universe, will anyone be left standing? Let's find out.

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 9: "Drifting Like Dust"

~EXE~

Nightwing and Iris had made it to Coast City first, where they found the Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, and the Martian Manhunter in a heated confrontation with a green-cloaked monstrosity blasting jade flame everywhere. Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, had been fighting the monster as well, even before the League had arrived to assist him, but it looked like his determined resistance was petering out.

"What the . . . ?" Iris uttered, horrified by the sight of the green horror.

"Parallax," Nightwing muttered, before charging him for a speed blitz. Parallax merely rendered himself incorporeal to make Nightwing pass through him harmlessly . . . and it was only Nightwing's dexterity that kept him from a dangerous collision with the Flash, Barry Allen. With a dime turn, Nightwing righted himself and went after Parallax again, only for Parallax to deflect his attack with a green energy bubble . . . a bubble much like the kind a Green Lantern would produce with his or her ring.

"Whoever he is . . . his powers are just like mine!" Hal exclaimed.

"Not just like yours, Jordan . . . _better. __More __focused. __**Stronger,**_" the being retorted, his voice deep and reverberating through the bones of everyone present . . . but chillingly familiar to Nightwing, who'd been there the first time this tragedy had played out.

"Who are you?" Hal yelled.

The green-cloaked being threw off said cloak, revealing green armor in the shape of a lantern over a black bodysuit and the face of none other than Hal Jordan, his eyes glowing green with power and aglitter with insanity. The League looked between the Green Lantern and the human-shaped horror known as Parallax, unsure of what their eyes were telling them.

"Hal . . . ?" the Flash voiced his belief.

"Who are you?" Wonder Woman asked. "Why are you wearing the Green Lantern's face?"

"Hit me with your Lasso of Truth and I'll tell you," Parallax taunted.

Incensed, Wonder Woman went right for Parallax, who countered with a blast of emerald flame that she blocked with her bracers. It was this moment that was used by Superman to fly over Wonder Woman and straight at Parallax, who proved himself deft at multi-tasking and blocked the Kryptonian hero's assault just as his own attack was still deflected by Wonder Woman. With a burst of emerald force, Parallax repelled both heroes a great distance from him, while the Martian Manhunter attempted to assault him telepathically.

_[My mind is not a nice place to be, J'onn. Get out while you can.]_

_[True, but I have seen inside minds like yours before.]_

_[Have you now?]_

Martian Manhunter recoiled with a scream, as though his body was afire like his mind had been set by touching Parallax's. Parallax, of course, took the opportunity to use emerald flame to ignite J'onn on the physical plane as well.

"J'onn!" Hal shouted in horror.

With a combination of speed tornadoes and a shockwave-inducing super-punch, the Flashes and Nightwing snuffed out the jade flames threatening to consume the Manhunter. "J'onn!" Barry called out. "Are you . . . ?"

"It will not take me long to recover my strength . . ." the Manhunter replied. ". . . but I fear that is time this being will not permit me."

"We'll cover you!" Hal shouted, and he used his ring to generate a high-powered assault cannon that he fired at Parallax, who just stood and endured the blast . . . without so much as a scratch.

"How pedestrian," Parallax sneered. "I'm ashamed I used to be you."

"YOU'RE NOT ME!" Hal roared, and let loose with a blast of raw jade power that would have floored anyone else, even a Kryptonian like Superman. Parallax, on the other hand, seemed to not give much of a damn about the assault, although once the light and smoke cleared, he could be seen with his arms protectively crossed, like he'd actually had to _block_ that attack.

"Then again, maybe we're still not that different from each other," the Hal doppelganger mused wryly.

"Why are you here?" Flash interrogated.

"To preserve what I've created," Parallax replied. "These interlopers would destroy it all, tear it down completely! I'm trying to save us all!"

"Save us all?" Barry echoed. "What are you talking about?"

"I did it all for you!" Parallax screamed furiously. "And I _won__'__t_ let _them_ ruin it for us!"

In a frenzy of high-speed teleports, Nightwing had been thrown to the ground and Iris was embedded in the wall of a nearby building. Hal powered up his ring again and attacked Parallax. "I don't care what you think you're doing; I just see a lunatic acting out, and I'm going to stop you!"

"Stop me?" Parallax repeated with a harsh laugh before punching Hal in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit blood. "_I__made__you!_" With that, he grabbed Hal's throat and threw him into another nearby building, leaving him there as a bloodied heap, even through his ring-generated force field.

At that moment, Superman and Wonder Woman both came down from the sky like speeding rockets . . . and their impacts were just as powerful, enough to leave a crater where Parallax had stood. Wonder Woman looked into the crater to see if Parallax was still there, but her hyper-keen senses warned her that he wasn't. As she heard the whistle of something being propelled through the air, she whirled and shoved Superman out of the way just in time to be pierced by a jade energy knife.

"Diana!" Superman screamed, about to rush to her side when the Amazon warrior held out a hand to stop him.

"Kryptonite . . ." she hissed in warning as she pulled the knife out.

Indeed, Superman could feel the poisonous radiation even from his current position, and while it made him wary, it didn't make him wary enough to keep from trying to see to his comrade. It was that moment of weakness that Parallax took as an opportunity to attack Superman more directly, with a charging punch coated in green fire just like his entire body. Superman was knocked off-balance by the punch, but not enough not to punch back, staggering Parallax for but a moment, a moment being all someone of his speed needed to attack again . . . and again . . . and again.

Just as Superman was about to strike the finishing blow, Parallax caught his fist and squeezed viciously, audibly cracking the bones in Superman's hand. "You say . . . you're doing this . . . for us . . . but like the _real_ Hal said . . . all I see . . . is a maniac out for destruction," Superman spat through painfully gritted teeth.

Parallax brutally threw Superman aside before turning his attentions upon the charging Wonder Woman, who had just managed to sock him in the face before his shields blocked it from touching his skin . . . and then forcibly repelled her. A snaking emerald arm extended for Parallax, only for Parallax to slice it off with an emerald energy sword before flying at its source . . . the Martian Manhunter, who then turned his method of attack to psychic force that actually knocked him back while regenerating his severed arm.

While Parallax was off-balance, Barry and Iris took the opportunity to attack him together in a high-speed flurry of punches from almost every angle imaginable. Peppered painfully by the Flashes' strikes, Parallax had to create a shield to deflect further attacks. "Get out of my way, Barry . . ." Parallax snarled. "I'd rather not hurt you; you and I have been through too much together to end it like this!"

"What are you talking about?" Barry snarled as he attacked harder. "I don't know you at all!"

_[You __do, __Barry __Allen,]_ the Flash suddenly heard the Manhunter in his thoughts. _[I __cannot __entirely __explain __. __. __. __but __that __monster __is, __or __rather, _was, _Hal __Jordan.]_

_How __is __that __possible?_ Barry thought. _Hal __wouldn__'__t __do __something __like __this! __He __wouldn__'__t __become __this __monster!_

_[It __is __more __complex __than __you __know, __Flash,]_ the Martian Manhunter responded.

Just then, missiles fired straight at Parallax, with the Flashes dodging just in time for Parallax to be nailed dead on . . . or so they'd assume, had it been almost anyone else. Predictably, Parallax was ensconced in a green shield that utterly diffused the impact of the missiles. He smiled a slow, deadly smile of recognition. "Batman . . ."

Indeed, the missiles had come from the Batwing, which Batman was flying into battle against Parallax. "Bruce . . ." Nightwing uttered as he rose to his feet.

~EXE~

Back in the Summers house, a throwdown of massive proportions was taking place. Symbiotic tendrils exploded from Spider's body, lunging and grasping at the red-clad maniac assassin known to him as Deadpool and his so-called niece the Ravager, both of whom were dodging and slashing at the tendrils with their swords. The Green Ranger was in a high-speed clash with the twisted red horror that called himself Psycho Red, both of them blurring and warping in and out of sight as their fight took them all over the house. Rogue and the blue-haired lunatic with the jawbone-like armor over his right cheek were fighting each other, with Rogue feeling like a normal human up against a brick wall. Sara was tangoing, in a manner of speaking, with a longhaired man with symbiotic armoring resembling hers – because he wielded the same weapon as her, the Witchblade.

And the seemingly ridiculous tin can known to certain people as the Dalek was having itself a ball shooting everyone in the vicinity. Buffy, Faith, and Kazuma were dodging the Dalek's shots while doing their best to protect the Potentials, while Xander, Anya, Andrew, Dawn, and Giles had only their experience-taught reflexes to help . . . and some high-level protective spell-casting on Giles's part. All the same, neither Giles nor Andrew had expected to see a Dalek in the real world – but then they hadn't expected characters out of comic books or anime or Power Rangers to be "real," either.

"This is completely insane . . ." Anya remarked dryly. "Why are these guys tearing up our house and not going out to make millions as extremely realistic costumers?"

Kazuma deflected more of the Dalek's blasts by using his wind magic as a shielding tool before turning up the wind to act as a slashing tool. "Believe it or not, some things are more important to us than money!" he shouted over his own wind. "Not that I couldn't have stood to get paid for doing this crap!"

"Will you be careful with that, Kazuma?" Buffy shouted over the wind. "You're going to start tearing people's clothes to shreds, and I'm not looking forward to replacing everyone's outfits when we get out of this alive!"

"Sorry, boss lady!" Kazuma shouted. "Can't hear you over this wind!"

"Boss lady?" Buffy echoed in confusion.

Faith chuckled. "Sounds like this guy likes his women to be a little hard on him, teach him who's in charge. Just my speed."

"EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" the Dalek shouted. "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

"Will you shut up?" the dreadlocked Rhona, one of the Potentials, roared angrily as she took down a sword and used it in an attempt to stab the Dalek. That earned her a windy separation from the Dalek, lest said Dalek succeed in perforating her like he had with a few other unfortunate Potentials.

"Are you crazy?" Kazuma yelled.

"Maybe, but she's got the right idea . . ." Faith remarked. "We gotta take the fight to these psychos."

"Fight, huh?" Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, the blue-haired madman with the jawbone-like armor over his right cheek, taunted. "Come on, then, girlies! The boss told me all about you two! Slayers! Sworn defenders of the human race from evil monsters! I've fought actual death gods and won . . . what the hell are you two?"

Faith charged Grimmjow, only for Grimmjow to catch her by the face without seemingly moving any other muscle . . . and the hand holding her by her face was starting to glow a bloody red. Before he could unleash the blast of energy he was powering up for, Rogue punched him in the chest, knocking him away from Faith and leaving her with a redder-than-healthy face.

"Thanks . . ." the dark-haired Slayer uttered.

"Pleasure's mine, sugar," Rogue replied. "Pleasure's mine . . ." She rushed at Grimmjow with a vengeance, intending to rip him a couple of new ones.

"Ian . . ." Sara uttered, recognizing the man before her. This man was Ian Nottingham, the loyal servant of Kenneth Irons, who had raised her and nurtured her into his personal weapon . . . and Ian had been her first love. He had returned those feelings, despite the conditioning he had gone through at Irons' hands, but her rebellion against Irons had torn them apart, forced them on opposite sides, much to their mutual regret and anguish. And this one was wielding the Witchblade – along with another power that felt familiar to her, a power she had come up against before . . . the Darkness.

"Sara . . ." Ian gasped out in recognition, the longing and pain in his eyes as clear as she'd hoped was not equally so in her own eyes.

"What are you doing with these guys?" Sara asked.

"I'm not the Ian you know, Sara . . . and you're not the Sara I know," Ian countervailed. "Reality splits into endless parallel and alternate routes, and two people who might look alike and share a name most often have different stories, different pasts . . . different futures . . ." The last two words were spoken with bitterness, before he redoubled his attack on her, a serpentine black blade extending from the armor on his arm and whipping toward her as she dodged and struck back with her own blade.

"Awww, ain't that a beautiful love story right there?" Deadpool asked. "Sara Pezzini, hot-as-hell NYC cop up against badass and dead sexy assassin Ian Nottingham! It's like _The __Thomas __Crown __Affair,_ or that one movie with Clooney and Lopez way back after _Batman __& __Robin!_"

"Will you shut up and focus on the job?" Ravager yelled.

"Sounds like your niece doesn't like you very much," Spider taunted.

"Oh, please," Deadpool replied airily. "Everyone likes me. They're just too tsundere to admit it."

"Otaku . . ." Ravager muttered.

"Hell, yeah!" Deadpool shouted as he continued to slash at Spider. "Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokemon for life!"

Spider shot a black web at Deadpool, using the web as an impromptu bungee cord to spring himself into a kick to Deadpool's chest before kicking off to shoot Ravager with impact webbing. Ravager attempted to deflect it with her swords, but all it did was get her stuck in a black web, which she carved herself out of with a hidden knife . . . that she threw at Spider's head. Spider swatted the knife out of the air without even looking at her, and said knife slashed the wildly firing Dalek.

"Mi-ser-a-ble hu-man in-grate," the Dalek snarled in its robotic tone.

"Hey, shut up, you freaking tin can!" Ravager yelled back.

"Trouble in paradise?" Spider taunted the bickering duo, just as he started dodging the bullets firing from Deadpool's semiautomatic.

"Hey, impact webbing!" Deadpool shouted over his gunfire. "Nice! Reilly must be really proud of you, incorporating his stuff into yours!"

Spider's eyes narrowed beneath his symbiotic mask as he started sprinting at Deadpool while weaving through the masked mercenary's bullets. "Hey, be careful where you dodge, Spider-Man!" an irritated Xander shouted at the rapidly moving web-slinger. "Not all of us are bulletproof!"

"Don't call us Spider-Man," Spider snarled. "The name's Spider."

"Oh, yeah, Mr. 'I Am the Spider and Peter Parker Is Dead,'" Xander griped. "It wasn't fun the first time you went on that spiel."

"We keep forgetting, we're a comic book character to you people," Spider griped back. "Well, forgive us for not being our usual friendly neighborhood self."

"He's still doing the mid-fight banter," Andrew commented. "Mid-fight banter is so awesome when you hear it in person."

"Will you cease drooling and try to focus here?" Giles asked irately. "We have Potentials in danger of dying."

"Oh, right," Andrew assented, chastened by Giles's brusque tone.

"Who's your boss?" Rogue shouted as she had Grimmjow pinned.

"Who said I had a boss?" Grimmjow taunted.

"_You __did!_" Rogue yelled back. "Now you want me to absorb you to find out?"

"Try it . . ." Grimmjow taunted with a smug smirk still on his face. "You'll get a nice surprise . . ."

Rogue would have torn off her glove, but she couldn't risk Grimmjow freeing himself and attacking her in that time. As such, she did what she had to do, even if it was the most repulsive thing she could think of at the moment. She kissed Grimmjow's lips, as that big mouth of his was not quite covered by the jawbone armor over his right cheek, and his energy – _reiryoku,_ it was called where he came from – began to flow into her. Unfortunately, it wasn't without its consequences, as she found out when she stumbled back screaming from the hurricane of memories of miscellaneous souls that had been consumed by the Hollow that had ultimately become Grimmjow Jaegerjaques.

"Warned you, bitch . . ." Grimmjow casually remarked, as though all she'd done was drink bad liquor and not absorbed the repressed multitude of souls that had gone into the Hollow-turned-Arrancar.

Meanwhile, the Green Ranger and Psycho Red clashed swords, the Sword of Darkness vs. the Psycho Sword. The Green Ranger sent out an arc of jade energy at Psycho Red through his sword, which Psycho Red cleaved through with his own sword before blurring after the Green Ranger. Grabbing his head with his outstretched hand, the twisted red cyber-fiend pinned Tommy into a wall and began draining his mind.

"What are you –?" Tommy started to ask, struggling against the mind drain.

"Reading your memories, learning everything about you so I can kill you better!" Psycho Red crowed. He began to laugh, a mechanical, distorted mockery of the sound. "So you killed all your fellow Power Rangers! Including the girl! The pink one! Did she scream nicely after she saw you slaughter her friends?"

Toxic green energy began to emanate from the Green Ranger, and the diamond centerpiece of his gold shield began to glow green as well. "_Shut__.__.__.__**up!**_" he roared, his voice deepening demonically as his green aura exploded from him, blasting Psycho Red back. Calling forth the Sword of Darkness, he slashed Psycho Red repeatedly and at such speeds that he might as well have been an angry green blur. With his final slash came a bolt of green energy that threw Psycho Red through a wall, and Tommy wasn't even done yet, dragging his blade along the floor as he charged to finish off the twisted red horror.

"Holy crap . . ." Vi uttered in astonishment. "I never thought a Power Ranger could be _that_ scary."

"Yeah . . ." Dawn agreed quietly.

As Tommy charged to finish off Psycho Red, Psycho Red retaliated with a green lightning strike that was deflected by the Dragon Shield and dispersed all over the house, blasting holes in the walls and even the ceiling, bringing a huge chunk of it down on the Dalek. "In-so-lent in-fer-i-or ma-chine . . ." the Dalek snarled.

"_You__'__re_ the inferior machine here, so you shut your trap!" Psycho Red retorted, punching Tommy hard enough to break his visor and nearly carve out his eyes with the shattering fragments before charging for the Dalek. The Dalek fired at Psycho Red, who blurred and warped out of the way of its turret fire before closing in for a vicious slash of his Psycho Sword. Before the hostilities could continue, both of them suddenly experienced painful electrical shocks that froze them in their current positions, screaming in shared agony.

"What's happening to them?" Buffy asked.

"Their boss is pulling their electronic leashes," Faith replied.

"Speaking of leashes . . ." Kazuma growled, sending a slicing wave of wind magic at Grimmjow, who blurred out of sight before reappearing to come at the Contractor of the Wind. He tried to punch Kazuma, but was blocked by a shield of intense wind from him. In spite of that, he pushed through the shield with his fist, even as Kazuma powered it up further. When the shield finally broke, it imploded with such force that it created a small depression of air . . . that still nearly sucked the breath out of everyone in the vicinity and further damaged the house. It also sent Kazuma flying into the nearest solid object with quite the painful impact.

"Punk-ass . . ." Grimmjow muttered.

Xander, Buffy, Anya, Faith, and Dawn turned to Giles, while Andrew was still huddled in a frightened heap. "You got any spells that could finish this guy, Giles?" Xander asked, while still gasping to regain his breath.

"Nothing that would be strong enough . . ." Giles answered ruefully. "At most, it would buy us some time to get away, and given the speed this fiend can move at, it would not be very much time."

"So die fighting?" Faith concluded.

"_No __one__'__s_ dying here, Faith," Buffy countervailed. "We'll beat him, him and the others that came with him."

"Little late for that, Buff," Anya replied grimly, gesturing at the bodies of the Potentials that hadn't been able to be saved from the Dalek's shooting spree.

Sara, Ian, Deadpool, Ravager, and Spider had been dodging the rubble from Psycho Red's attack as they fought each other, Spider turning the rubble to his advantage by catching it with his webs and using it like a hammer to batter Deadpool and Ravager. Sara and Ian simply gracefully ducked and weaved between the flying and falling rubble as they clashed blades with each other. When they weren't clashing blades, their armors were extending bladed tendrils to break the pieces of rubble threatening to hit _each__other._

"I guess there's no escaping it . . ." Ian muttered resignedly.

"I guess not," Sara conceded, her tone heavy with sorrow, as their blades met once more.

"Man, this is almost like _Final __Fantasy __VII: __Advent __Children!_" came the remark from Deadpool. "You know, where rubble is flying everywhere while the two dudes are having their big swordfight . . . and the spiky dude is overcompensating! Seriously! Who needs a sword that big?"

"Stupid Uncle Wade," Ravager muttered as she redoubled her attack on Spider, who dodged and weaved through her attacks. Once he was close enough, he grabbed her by her half-masked face.

"Why don't we see what you're hiding under there . . ." Spider purred maliciously, only to be stabbed from behind by Deadpool, forcing him to drop Ravager – with her half-mask still attached to his hand. "How the hell did . . . vibroblade . . ."

"Uh-huh!" Deadpool confirmed. "Figured a vibratory sword would get past that symbiote of yours, given how much it can't stand sonic vibes and all . . . Shame I'm not fast enough to make the sword vibrate with my own hands like that chick from Claymore, but you make do with what you got. Besides, I couldn't let you off my favorite niece with your _other_ clone's favorite finishing move. Speaking of, I could have sworn I saw that in a Mortal Kombat video or something! Guy would fit in real nice there . . . and I'd totally outdo him, because nobody brings the blood and guts better than me!"

"Wade. Shut. _Up!_" Ravager snarled.

"Oh, you're just angry because everyone can see your pretty face, Rosie!" Deadpool mocked her cheerfully.

"Pretty" would not exactly be the word to describe Rose Wilson's face – not anymore, anyway. The right half of her face that had been bare earlier was that of an attractive white-haired teenaged girl, while the newly exposed left half was marred with unsettling burn scars. Not nearly as disfiguring as the scars that had driven one Harvey Dent completely insane, but still troubling to look at . . . to be certain.

"Just give me my mask!" Ravager snapped.

"Fine, fine . . ." Deadpool replied, and ripped Ravager's mask out of Spider's clutching hand, since the vibratory sword still inside him kept him from exerting much resistance. "Here you go, girl." He tossed the mask back to Ravager, who jammed it over the scarred side of her face posthaste. "Now let's finish Venom-Spidey off! He's no fun!"

Meanwhile, a recovering Kazuma had Grimmjow's red-glowing hand planted over his face, a sign that Grimmjow was going to blast his head off with a Cero. Kazuma had attempted to attack him with his wind magic, but it had only caused shallow wounds at most, such was the toughness of the Arrancar's hide . . . and now he was about to die.

_Guess __this __means __I__'__ll __be __seeing __you __again __soon, __darling,_ the wind mage thought.

~EXE~

When the smoke faded, Parallax stood, completely unaffected by the Batwing's kamikaze crash into him. Green energy chains extended from his arms and held Batman tightly. "I should have known it'd be impossible to make you happy," Parallax remarked regretfully. "After all, the only way you'd be happy would be if you were never Batman – and this world, as all others, needed its Dark Knight . . . so I spared you, even though you would be the most dangerous to me. And now –" his eyes shone a lurid emerald "– I will _correct_ that sentimental oversight."

Nightwing charged Parallax in a blur of black . . . only to be too late to stop Parallax from obliterating Batman in one shot. "A painless death I gave him," Parallax commented, as though to comfort Nightwing. "I suppose I could not overcome my own sentimentality after all."

With an enraged scream, Nightwing unleashed a maximum-power heat vision blast on Parallax, who blocked it with a jade energy shield and lashed at Nightwing with bladed chain links. In a flurry of speed and acrobatics, Nightwing dodged the separated chain links, only to be brutally knocked aside by a charging Parallax. A rush of blue was Parallax's only warning as Superman went on the attack, intent on beating Parallax to death.

"That . . . was my best friend . . . _and __you __murdered __him!_" Superman screamed in furious grief as he pummeled Parallax with such speed and force that the impacts created tremendous shockwaves. Even worse for Parallax was when Wonder Woman joined in, furious tears in her eyes as she also attempted to beat Parallax to death. Against this dual assault, Parallax retaliated with an explosion of emerald fire that incinerated both the Kryptonian and Amazonian heroes . . . who could only reach out to each other in the split second before being completely disintegrated.

Parallax was soon attacked from all sides, by the Flashes Barry Allen and Iris West, by the Green Lantern, by the Martian Manhunter, by Aquaman, and even Black Canary through her sonic scream. The emerald monster seemed to contract upon himself in self-protection, only to explode into a storm of emerald violence, killing the Green Lantern first. Then he incinerated the Martian Manhunter, boiled the water inside Aquaman to internally combust him, hyper-accelerated Barry Allen past survivable levels even for him . . . and impaled Black Canary's voice box before obliterating her and Green Arrow when the archer had attempted to protect her.

"That's the Justice League . . . all gone . . ." Parallax muttered. "Just like before. Just like all the other times . . . you'd think I'd stop giving a damn . . ."

Nightwing was about to attack Parallax in a suicidal rage, only to be held back by Iris's touch. "You . . . you're going to pay," he snarled at the emerald horror.

"Threaten me all you want," Parallax answered coldly. "It makes no difference. If you come at me, you'll join your mentor and the rest of the Justice League, you and your lover both." Then he disappeared in a flash of green flame, leaving Nightwing and Iris alone with their grief inside the annihilated cityscape that used to be the metro district of Coast City.

Nightwing collapsed to his knees, tears seeping through his masked eyes. Iris tilted her sunglasses over her hair so that Nightwing could see her eyes, revealing that she was crying, too, as she held him. As she wept, she began to speak, "We can't stay like this, Dick . . . he's going to kill everyone in this world . . . we can't let that happen."

"You're right, Iris," Nightwing whispered despite choking on his tears. "We'll mourn them later . . . right now, we stop Parallax . . ." His gaze moved past Iris and to a forlorn Green Lantern power ring, the only thing to survive the destruction of the Hal Jordan simulacrum. "And I think there's at least one way to do it . . ." The ring levitated in an aura of green light and then zipped away, its trail distinguishable only by that same green aura.

"It's finding a new ring bearer," Iris muttered.

"And we have to make sure Parallax doesn't take out this one," Dick responded as he straightened up. "We're going to need some serious reinforcements, a Justice League of our own . . ." His expression filled with determination and even a shadow of hope. "If I'm right, I know where we can find them."

~EXE~


	10. Rewired and Reloaded

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox Studios, and Dark Horse Comics. Spider-Man, Rogue, and Deadpool are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. Rose Wilson, Nightwing, Iris West, and others you may recognize from the DC Universe are the property of DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Ian Nottingham and Sara Pezzini are the property of Top Cow Productions. Psycho Red and Tommy Oliver are the property of Saban Brands, while Grimmjow Jeagerjaques is the property of Tite Kubo, and The Doctor and the Dalek belong to the creators of Doctor Who. Kazuma Yagami is the property of the creator of Kaze no Stigma. Neither JOUNOUCHI-sama nor myself make any money or receive any other material compensation for the writing of this story, this is purely for personal entertainment and the enjoyment of any readers who stumble upon this.

Author's note: Well, I'm getting back in the swing of writing again, so I figure I might as well start off by picking up The Other Exiles again. Last we left things, our heroes were in dire straits; Parallax had just obliterated the Justice League of his world, leaving Nightwing and Iris the only ones standing, and back in the Buffyverse, Weapon X was handing the rest of the Exiles and the Slayers their rear ends on silver platters. Is there hope for any of them to be saved? Even if they are saved, will it be in time to save reality itself? Good question . . . and it will be answered here. Hang on.

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 10: "Rewired and Reloaded"

~EXE~

Realizing that they were outmatched against Parallax, Nightwing and Iris had retreated to the Batcave, where Nightwing immediately began patching data into the supercomputer to track the Titans of this plane of reality. "What are you doing?" Iris asked.

"We need a new Justice League," Nightwing replied. "To do that, we have to find them all. Roy, Garth, Donna, Wally, M'gann, Kon-El . . . whoever got Hal's ring . . ."

"And Robin," Iris added. "You, technically speaking."

"Yeah . . ." Nightwing muttered. _How am I going to tell them that their mentors are dead, and that they're going to have to step into their boots to stop Parallax from destroying this world?_

As though sensing his thoughts, Iris placed a comforting hand on Nightwing's arm. Nightwing didn't verbally respond, but he did relax at her touch and look back at her with a softened expression. "Come on. I think I know where to start."

~EXE~

A young man dejectedly tumbled out of the nightclub, tossed out on his rear end by the bouncer who'd had to break up the fight that had ensued between him and a much burlier man with jealousy issues regarding his girlfriend. All the young man had meant to do was say hi, toss back a couple of drinks with her, and compliment her on the artistry of the acrylics on her nails. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, had thought he was trying to steal her away, and when liquid courage had made him a little too loose with his opinions of the boyfriend's possessive attitude . . . ass-kicking ensued.

His.

That was how Kyle Rayner, down-and-out comic strip artist, had been forced out of the club. His buddies, the guys who'd suggested he come here in the first place, had left him on his own long before, off to get lucky with some girls they'd picked up. That left him to wait for a cab or a train or whichever would be cheaper or even available this time of night.

Alas, as he was about to make his decision, he felt something smack him hard in the head, as though it had been thrown at him, and rather forcefully at that. Whoever had done it had a strong arm, but who'd want to throw something at him? Maybe it was the jealous 'roid addict come to settle the score more permanently. Kyle turned, ready to get this beating done and over with so he could go back to his loser life – and he found something he wasn't expecting at all.

It was a small green ring, glowing brightly . . . with the insignia of the Green Lantern. "What's this?" Kyle asked. "Some kind of joke?" In spite of his skepticism, he picked up the ring, looking at the lantern symbol inscribed into its front. "I don't know how you got here, but the real Green Lantern needs you more than I do."

"_**Kyle Rayner of Sector 2814. You have the ability to overcome fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."**_

The ring had forced itself on Kyle's finger and engulfed him in green light that catapulted him through the skies, through what felt like time and space itself . . . and into the ruins of what had once been Oa. "What the hell happened here?" Kyle asked.

"Parallax is what happened, young Terran," an infinitely somber voice responded, prompting Kyle to turn and see a blue-skinned small man in red-and-white robes bearing the symbol of the Green Lantern. "He was one of our own . . . but he grew desperate, wracked with the grief of great loss, and in his grief and rage and terror, he invoked forces beyond measure, beyond control, and lost himself in them, becoming the monster that killed the Green Lantern whose ring you bear now."

"Who are you?" Kyle asked. "Did you bring me here?"

"It was not I who brought you here, young Terran," the blue-skinned, red-robed small man denied. "The rings are hardcoded to bring those they freshly recruit to this place, to Oa, where they can be trained to harness their power to its fullest potential and protect the universe, or at least their sector of it. Alas, Oa has been destroyed, wiped out by Parallax and nearly all of its Lanterns slaughtered."

"Are there others like you?" Kyle wondered.

"Once . . . but they are dead now . . . even my Sayd . . ." On those last words, the small blue man in the red robes grew even sadder in his tone, as though this Sayd had been especially dear to him.

"I'm sorry . . ." Kyle murmured. "Who was Sayd?"

"Not important right now," the red-robed blue man answered bluntly. "There will be time for me to mourn her loss later, provided you act to stop Parallax. You are the only one who can. With the Central Power Battery through which we harnessed the Green Light of Will damaged and depleted by Parallax's incursion, you are the only Green Lantern with the power to fight him, and fight him you must. His intention is to break our universe apart and fashion together a new one of his own grim design, something that must not be allowed to happen _again!_"

"Again?" Kyle echoed. "You mean this Parallax already did it once?"

"Yes," the red-robed blue man admitted. "It is only so often that a universe can be disassembled and reassembled, and each time it rapidly accelerates the entropy of that universe. Should he succeed in doing it even once more, that entropy would not only be the end of _this _universe, it would bleed into others and destroy them as well in a chain reaction that would ultimately be the death of reality itself!"

"The stakes . . . are that high?" Kyle wondered. "It . . . it feels like one of those Doctor Who episodes I always loved watching . . . but it's real, isn't it? And what makes you so sure _I_ can stop it?"

"The ring chose you for a reason, Kyle Rayner of Earth," the blue man answered. "It saw something in you, something that could equal or even surpass the spirit of its previous bearer. You, Kyle Rayner, will be the torch-bearer of the entire Green Lantern Corps. Not only Earth, not only this universe, but _all_ universes are in your hands now – whether we live or die is dependent on your choices from herein."

Kyle said nothing for a long time, and then he sputtered. "You know my name?"

"The ring told me," the blue man replied. "And as long as we are on the subject of names, mine is Ganthet."

"I can't promise anything," Kyle confessed. "I've never been good at anything but letting my imagination run wild and scribbling it onto a piece of paper. I'm no hero. I'm not the kind of guy who's gonna walk off into the sunset with the girl in his arms and the bad guy laid out for the cops to find. That's not my style . . . but where I'm at now, there's something more important than my style, or what kind of loser I am. If I have to wear this ring until somebody better than me comes along, that's cool, because I'm going to make sure this universe lasts long enough for someone better than me to come along!"

"Then recite the oath, Kyle Rayner," Ganthet commanded, bringing forth a green lantern with a glowing core where a light bulb should be. Kyle placed his ring at the glowing core of the lantern, and began to speak words that flowed off his tongue as though they were a pledge he'd spoken all of his life.

"In brightest day, in blackest night, let no evil escape my sight . . . let those who worship evil's might, beware my power – _**Green Lantern's Light!**_"

Fully charged with the power of the Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner's scuffed jacket and pants, along with the shirt underneath, changed into a skintight black suit with green shoulders that tapered down into green stripes running down his arms that stopped at needle points on the backs of his hands. On his chest was a stylistic representation of a green lantern, an oval core centered between narrow trapezoids framing it from above and below. Around his lower torso were angular green lines framing his abs and stopping only to wrap around the insides of his knees. New lines extended from the tips of his feet and ran up his shins to wrap around the outside of his calves just below his knees. An armored green visor wrapped around his eyes, hiding them from view and large enough to partially conceal his face.

"Whoa . . ." Kyle uttered once the transformation was over. "I wasn't expecting this . . . did the other Green Lanterns wear anything like this?"

"The ring responded to your unique traits and shaped your uniform accordingly," Ganthet replied. "It is your time now, Green Lantern of Earth. Go forth . . . and save us all."

"I won't let you down," Kyle vowed. "Green Lantern, let's rocket!" And with that proclamation, the new Green Lantern of Earth was indeed rocketing from Oa and back to Earth, to save it, to save the universe, to stop Parallax . . . and maybe to prove he wasn't such a loser, after all.

~EXE~

Back on Earth, Nightwing and Iris were in a three-way race with Wally West, still known as Kid Flash in this reality. It had started when Iris and Nightwing had tried to track down Wally to tell him of his mentor's fall. Wally, being suspicious as he was, forced them into a chase and now they were on their third lap around the globe, passing Singapore for the third time.

"Damn it, Wally, stop!" Nightwing yelled, using a burst of speed to intercede the yellow-and-red-clad speedster and knock him down.

"Who are you, anyway?" Wally protested.

"Your friend, that's who!" Nightwing retorted, frustrated by Wally's obstinate behavior. Then again, it wouldn't be Wally, no matter the universe, if he wasn't an obstinate jerk. He pulled off his mask, letting Wally look him in the eyes, blue meeting green. "Tell me if I'm lying to you!"

Wally looked at Iris. "And who's my fan here?" he inquired in a flirty tone.

"Your daughter from the future, _Dad,_" Iris retorted, slightly freaked by a younger version of her father flirting with her.

"Her name's Iris West," Nightwing replied. "I'm Dick Grayson. Not like the one you know, but still Dick Grayson."

"All right, say I buy what you're selling," Wally skeptically remarked. "You wanna tell me what's going on with that storm up there?"

"It's Parallax," Nightwing replied. "He killed the Justice League. Down to the last man. You guys . . . their protégés . . . you have to carry on the fight for them, or it's the entire universe's ass on a silver platter. He's gonna obliterate it all. Everything you ever loved, everything you ever cherished . . . it'll all be gone if you don't stop him."

"And the Flash? What happened to him?" Wally asked.

"He died, too," Nightwing admitted ruefully. "I'm sorry, Wally . . ."

A look of absolute grief passed through Wally's eyes, before his expression hardened into rage. "Then why didn't you save him?"

"Because I couldn't . . ." Nightwing confessed. "I'm sorry, Wally. I'm so . . . sorry . . ."

"I should have been there!" Wally exploded, his anger turning from Nightwing and focusing inward. "I could have –!"

"You could have what, Dad, died with him?" Iris bitterly rejoined.

"And what do you know about it?" Wally retorted furiously.

"More than you think!" Iris shot back.

Nightwing got between the quarreling time-separated father-daughter duo. "Enough. It's not going to work this way. Wally, you know me, right? My parents . . . I saw them die, too. And I wished, just like you, that I could have saved them. Parallax killed everyone in the League, including _Batman._ It . . . it eats me up, too. But none of that's going to matter if we can't find a way to stop Parallax from killing this entire universe just like he did our mentors. Please . . ."

There was tense silence for a great many moments, for what seemed like an eternity. Then, finally, Wally spoke. "What do you want me to do?"

Nightwing tossed Wally a ring, and Wally caught it with a startled look once he recognized it. "Change of clothes, Wally."

~EXE~

Nightwing and the father-daughter duo of Flashes sped to Paradise Island, better known as Themyscira, the home of the immortal women warriors known as Amazons. Someone had to break the news about Diana's death at Parallax's hands, to them and especially to her sister Donna Troy and her mother Queen Hippolyta. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be as easy as that. The Amazons were distrustful of those who came from "Man's World," especially if they were men . . . to the point that it was forbidden for a man to set foot on their island.

The result was the fight currently happening on Themyscira. With speed exceeding that of the messenger god Hermes, Wally, Iris, and Nightwing defended themselves from the Amazons. It wasn't as if the Amazons weren't putting up a fight; for their Ancient Greek aesthetic, their technology was surprisingly advanced, as Nightwing discovered when he was nearly impaled on an Amazon's spear. He'd managed to stop it from fully penetrating, but it still pierced him.

"Magic," Nightwing muttered. "Always magic . . ."

"It also vibrates," the spear-wielding Amazon replied. "Which means it can even pierce through your supposedly invincible personal force field."

"Thanks, I needed to hear that," Nightwing rejoined sarcastically. "I'll remember it for the future." And then he kicked her while catching an arrow tipped in the same magic-enhanced vibrating metal. In a blur of high-speed acrobatics, Nightwing managed to dodge or counter every attack headed his way, although the redheaded Amazon seemed to particularly have it in for him.

"Some things never change," Wally grumbled to himself, noticing the vicious tension between her and Nightwing.

The battle took a sudden turn when Donna Troy, in full Amazon garb, flew out and struck Nightwing in a blur of violent speed. "Donna, stop! It's me! It's Dick!"

As Donna was about to strike again, Nightwing caught her fist and looked her in the eyes. "You don't recognize me?"

"Dick?" Donna uttered. "You and Batman have a falling-out? Why are you wearing Superman's shield? And how are you fighting like this?"

"It's a long story, one I can't explain with _arrows_ and _spears_ and _swords_ coming at us all the time," Nightwing replied. This caused his erstwhile friend to take a look at the situation around her, noticing two Flash-garbed speedsters in the fray as well.

"Wally get a girlfriend?" Donna jibed.

Nightwing let out a sarcastic chuckle. "That's actually his daughter from the future. An alternate future, anyway. I'm also from another universe. Still Dick Grayson, just a little different."

"A _little_ different?" Donna repeated wryly.

"Princess!" the redheaded Amazon shouted. "Do you mind actually fighting this intruder instead of bantering with him?"

"He's a friend, Artemis!" Donna retorted. "So everyone stop, now!"

Amazingly enough, they stopped, albeit more out of confusion than actual weariness. That was when Queen Hippolyta came forth in her royal Amazon garb, looking at the tableau before her. "What are _men_ doing on this island?" she asked with imperious indignation.

"We are here to pass a message!" Nightwing declared. "A force of evil known as Parallax has come to this world intent on utterly sundering it! He has already slain the Justice League, Princess Diana amongst them! That is what we came to inform you of! Wonder Woman has died in battle against Parallax, fighting to the last breath to protect the world she cherished!"

"Diana's dead?" Donna uttered disbelievingly.

"You lie!" Artemis, the redheaded Amazon, shouted angrily.

"He's not a liar!" Iris declared just as angrily.

"Amazons . . ." Wally muttered.

"Look, I can do this," Nightwing said, holding up a calming hand. "Donna, you're every bit the embodiment of truth that your sister was. If I were lying, you'd know."

Donna walked closer to Dick and touched his face, peering into his eyes through his mask. "You're not lying, are you?" she whispered, her voice wavering as grief took over her mind.

"I'm sorry, Donna . . ." Nightwing whispered, before pulling her into a comforting embrace as she sobbed into his shoulder.

"He speaks the truth," Queen Hippolyta conceded with sorrow in her own tone. As much as she wished she could break down and cry like her second daughter, a queen had to maintain her composure at all times when before her subjects. Weakness could not be so much as even glimpsed, or else her subjects would also falter. The tenderness with which this masked man wearing the shield of Man's World's late champion held Donna was not quite that of a lover, but it was more than she had ever come to expect from the male gender.

"I'm sorry, too, Donna," Wally admitted, coming up to hug Donna as well. Once Donna had regained her composure, she looked up at him strangely.

"You're the Flash now?"

"I have to be. Barry isn't around anymore. Someone has to carry on for him."

Donna giggled softly, even if it was a strained sound. "You look good in red."

"So do you," Wally responded.

Wally, Donna, and Dick broke their embrace and turned to look upon Queen Hippolyta, Artemis, and the rest of the Amazons. "Wally West, Iris West, and I came here to seek allies," Nightwing explained. "With the Justice League dead, someone must fill the void, or else Parallax will gain enough power to tear this world apart and recreate it anew in his own twisted image. That can't be allowed to happen, for Diana's sake, for Barry's sake, for Bruce's sake . . . for the world's sake! The world still needs its heroes, and the world especially needs a Wonder Woman." Nightwing's gaze rested meaningfully on Donna when he spoke those last words.

"Dick . . . are you . . . ?" Donna asked, before turning to Hippolyta in uncertainty.

"I have felt it as well, my daughter," Hippolyta admitted. "The man with you speaks no lies, and the world outside still needs an emissary of peace to counteract the warlike ways of the men who rule it. You may go forth, Donna . . . go forth and save this world."

Donna smiled sadly at Hippolyta. "Thank you, Mother. I will do you and our people proud."

~EXE~

After recruiting Donna, the next order of business was finding Garth. To that end, Nightwing gave specialized diving suits designed by Batman to Wally, Donna, and Iris, while taking only an oxygen mask for himself. While his Kryptonian-powered body could withstand the depths of the ocean, he still needed to actually breathe, especially if he was to speak while underwater. With those preparations made, the foursome hitched a ride in Batman's submarine, Nightwing at the controls and steering the submarine.

As they approached the Atlantean city of Shayeris, Atlantean sentries approached them inside what looked like enclosed waverunners. "State your purpose for coming here, surface dwellers," the lead sentry ordered over a channel.

"My name is Nightwing, and I am bringing with me two Flashes and Wonder Woman," Nightwing declared. "We are here to see Garth, the regent of this domain. Will you let us pass?"

"You will be escorted and closely monitored," the sentry replied. "If we suspect that your intentions for seeing Prince-Regent Garth are less than honorable, you will be dealt with summarily."

"Harsh, aren't they?" Wally remarked.

"We are willing to accept those terms," Nightwing declared.

In summary order, they were escorted to the palace and then throne room of Shayeris, where Garth was present with a beautiful white-haired girl that Nightwing recognized as Dolphin, who looked well into pregnancy if her swollen belly was anything to go by. "These are the four who requested to see you, my liege," the sentry announced. "Do you recognize them at all?"

Garth smiled softly. "Leave me with them, but stand guard outside."

"Yes," the sentry acquiesced and departed with his subordinates.

Once they were gone, Garth's expression softened further. "Donna, Wally . . . nice outfits," he remarked.

"Thanks," Wally replied. "Dick got them for us."

"Dick . . . ?" Garth repeated, looking at Nightwing searchingly, which Nightwing took as a cue to remove his oxygen mask and eye-mask.

"Yeah, Garth, it's me," Nightwing admitted. "Only not quite the 'me' you'd know."

"What happened?" Garth asked.

"It's a log story, not really important right now," Wally replied. "Short version is that they're both from alternate realities, only one of them is our buddy Dick and the other is my daughter in the future."

"Name's Iris," Iris introduced herself. "Nice to meet you."

"This is my wife Dolphin," Garth introduced the white-haired woman beside him.

"It is nice to meet you, since you seem to be such good friends of my husband's," Dolphin remarked.

Donna smiled warmly at Dolphin, focused particularly on her swollen belly. "First child?"

"Yes," Dolphin confessed with a beatific smile. "We're going to name him Cerdian."

"Ah, so you know already . . ." Donna commented, still smiling gently.

Wally whispered in Nightwing's ear, "Is it just me, or were they right about pregnant women being even more beautiful?"

"Who's 'they'?" Nightwing whispered back sardonically. "Don't tell me you're starting to develop a 'thing.'"

"No, man, just pointing something out," Wally replied.

Nightwing sighed before putting his serious face on. "Garth, I came here to tell you . . . Orin is dead. Aquaman is dead. I'm sorry."

"Orin's dead?" Garth repeated, shocked and disbelieving. "How?"

"Parallax," Nightwing answered, "a monster that corrupted the Green Lanterns' power to use it against this entire world. He killed everyone in the Justice League – _everyone._ And we need your help, to form a new Justice League so we can put a stop to him before he destroys this entire world."

Dolphin's expression hardened and her tone turned colder than an arctic glacier. "Get out. I'm not going to let you rope my husband and the father of my child into a suicide mission."

"Dolphin . . ." Garth spoke, trying to calm her.

"I understand," Nightwing acknowledged. "He has a growing family to look after, along with a kingdom. Believe me, if I could find a way to do this without him, I would . . . just for that reason alone. I've seen what happens when fathers never make it back to their families, the toll it leaves, the hole that never quite gets filled again . . ." His own expression hardened. "But this isn't about what any of us want. It's about what this world needs, and this world needs its heroes – Garth being one of the most important. Dolphin, if this world dies, you and the man you love will never be able to see your child for the first time, hold him in your arms, watch his first steps, hear his first words, guide him through life as he grows older . . . and not just you, but so many others like you will never get that chance, either." He looked Dolphin in the eyes, blue meeting violet. "Please . . ."

Dolphin was the first to look away, unable to bear the sincerity in his eyes. She then turned to Garth. "You can go . . . so long as you come back to Cerdian and I. We need you just as much as the world does."

Garth kissed Dolphin gently. "Swear on my magic, I'll come back to you both."

~EXE~

In another universe and another time, the other Exiles were in dire straits. Kazuma Yagami, wind mage extraordinaire, was about to be finished off by a point-blank Cero to the face from the Sexta Espada Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. Spider, once known as Peter Parker and Spider-Man, was immobilized by the vibrating sonic sword embedded inside him and about to be finished off by the assassins Deadpool and Ravager. Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger, had been violently trounced by Psycho Red, and Rogue, the fusion of Kitty Pryde and Anna-Marie, was trapped in the myriad of memories absorbed from the aforementioned Grimmjow. With the exception of Sara Pezzini, who was still mired in her battle with Ian Nottingham, none of them were in much of a position to put up a fight.

Then a pulse of bright light emerged, forcing the Weapon X assassins back and even causing Buffy, Faith, and the rest to take a few steps back. "Those are _my_ Exiles," a familiar voice, albeit reverberating with power, declared. "I'd rather not see them broken. And speaking of things I'd rather not see broken . . ." Her voice deepened further as she turned upon the Weapon X assassins. "_Get out of my house!_"

Following that demand was an explosion of luminous power from the source of the voice, blasting the other-dimensional killers out of the Summers household and out of this reality. Once it died down, those remaining inside the house could see clearly just who was behind it – and with the exception of the Exiles, they were very amazed. It was none other than Buffy herself, glowing radiantly with untold power and almost angelic in her beauty.

"Hey, guys . . . long time no see," the glowing Buffy replied, smiling.

"Oh, hey, Buffy . . . and Buffy . . ." Kazuma remarked. "Wow . . . this is like one of those dreams guys have that they're not supposed to cop to having under pain of getting pain from women for being pervs." He chuckled. "By the way, thanks for the save. Getting face-palmed to death by that psycho wasn't looking like fun."

Buffy just looked very curiously at her luminescent doppelganger, who smiled slightly at her. "Wow . . . you're . . . radiant . . ." Andrew uttered stupidly.

Xander would have given Andrew a bitingly scornful look, but he was too busy gaping at the other, glowing Buffy. "Put your jaw back up, Xander, your drool's staining the carpet," was the mordant jibe from Anya.

~EXE~

The first thing Spider registered when he woke up was that the house had been completely fixed up, as though the fight had never taken place. The second thing he registered was that he wasn't feeling sonic vibrations ripping him and the symbiote apart from the inside anymore, although the symbiote had retreated into him, leaving him wearing naught but boxers. The third was that with the exceptions of those that had actually died, everyone looked fine. The fourth was that their foes had somehow disappeared, and fifth and perhaps most importantly, there was a blue British police box in the epicenter of the living room, and a slightly scruffy-looking man standing outside of it, looking around with undisguised wonder and curiosity.

"Uh, what happened?" Spider asked, pretending that he was oblivious to Vi's, Dawn's, and Faith's – not to mention _Andrew's,_ he noted with a slight shudder – furtive glances at his near-naked form.

"Ask boss lady," Rogue replied. "She came swooping in like an angel of vengeance and raised hell on those Weapon X guys."

"Pretty much," Omni-Buffy admitted.

"Oh, and the guys are all being drooling idiots, Spidey," Anya added. "Just thought I'd mention that in case you started wondering why your cute hiney has been sitting in a suspicious stain on that carpet."

"Hey, we weren't that bad . . ." Andrew protested lamely.

Spider quickly got off the ground. "Ok, Buff, now that you're here, we've got a question. What happened to Nightwing and Flash?"

"So the DC Universe characters are real, too?" Andrew asked, again awestruck.

"They have another mission," Omni-Buffy stated. "That's why I had to separate them from you. They're still alive, if that's what you're so worried about."

"Thanks for the answer," Spider muttered.

"Wait, Nightwing?" Vi asked. "The original Robin? Batman's first sidekick? Superhero heartthrob of the DC Universe?"

"Um, slightly different Nightwing," the de-morphed Tommy, looking rather shell-shocked from his fight with Psycho Red, wryly remarked.

"He has Superman's powers," Omni-Buffy replied. "And he is involved with the Flash my team picked up in their first adventure."

Dawn blushed at the thought, as Faith began to smirk, and Vi was about as red as her hair. "The Flash is a girl, by the way," Omni-Buffy clarified. "And Nightwing has Superman's powers because of Lex Luthor's attempt to transfer those powers to himself, which ended up killing Superman and nearly driving Nightwing nuts with guilt until he started wearing his symbol to cope. Like I said, he and Flash are on another mission."

"A Power Ranger!" the scruffy-looking man exclaimed excitedly when he saw Tommy, drawing attention to himself. "I've never actually had the chance to meet one in person before! Zordon I've encountered, Rita Repulsa I've fought, but never have I met an actual Power Ranger for myself!"

Tommy looked up blearily at the excitable man. "Who are you?"

"Call me The Doctor," the man replied with an amiable smile.

"The Doctor?" Andrew repeated. "Excuse me, but you're no Doctor I've seen before. Unless this is one of those new regenerations."

"How do you know about Time Lord regeneration cycles?" the man asked suspiciously.

"You're a TV show in this world," Spider replied dryly. "We all are. Us, Rogue, Sara, Tommy, Kazuma, Nightwing, Flash . . . we're fiction to these people. Of course, they're just as fictional to us. And yet, we all coexist in some form of reality or other."

"Us?" The Doctor repeated. His expression turned somewhat stern. "Young man, you should probably get that thing off you as soon as possible. It's not very healthy for your psychological or physical well-being."

"Thanks for the warning," Spider answered sardonically. "But we've got nothing left to lose."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Mr. Parker," The Doctor rejoined grimly.

"I gotta ask," Kazuma said, "what happened to those psychos?"

"I sent them back where they came from," Omni-Buffy responded. "By the way . . . you guys want to know what really happened to Willow?"

"All the dark magic she'd absorbed, when it conflicted with the magic she absorbed from Giles, it made her implode," Xander replied with sadness in his tone.

"No, that wasn't what happened," Omni-Buffy replied. "She was killed by another Weapon X operative, the Scarlet Witch."

"Scarlet Witch?" Rogue echoed. "Wanda?"

"From a reality where the chaos magic she'd been infected with years prior caused her powers to evolve to the point she could warp reality with a thought," Omni-Buffy replied. "It drove her insane, and the one who assembled Weapon X brought her in as her ace in the hole, her trump card, her ultimate solution to any mystical or cosmic problem."

"Weapon X?" Spider repeated. "That's what they call themselves?"

"Yeah," Omni-Buffy replied.

"Who sent Scarlet Witch to kill Willow?" Dawn asked furiously.

"You did, Dawn," Omni-Buffy admitted sadly. "The Dawn of my world, the world I originally came from, had her powers as the Key unlocked in a way that would allow her to keep her human form . . . but it . . . it did something to her mind, unbalanced it. And then came the 'equal and opposite reaction' thing, with her assembling her own team of Exiles to 'fix' things that had gone wrong in the Omniverse. Only her Exiles had no problem with killing or collateral damage . . . they even relished in it. She called them Weapon X because that was what they were – a weapon."

Dawn let out a choked gasp, horrified at the idea that she, or at least a version of her, had killed the girl she'd adored. Buffy wrapped her arms around her, attempting to soothe her. "What is going on here?" she asked.

"A lot," Omni-Buffy replied. "The Omniverse is unraveling all over the damn place, and I had to bring together a team to stop it because I'm not allowed to directly intervene, The Powers That Be preferring that whole noninterference bull-crap and all. Unfortunately, the Dawn of my world decided to solve that problem in her own way, and her way involves going over a lot of dead bodies. That's why Spike ended up dead, that's why Willow ended up dead . . . that's why Faith could've ended up the same way."

"What's he got to do with this?" Vi asked, looking at The Doctor.

"Simple, he's gonna be your new ride," Omni-Buffy replied. "The First is still assembling its forces, isn't it? Well, it's about to get a very big and very unpleasant surprise. . . ."

"Wonder how that chap will feel about running across a Time Lord," The Doctor remarked.

"Is the TARDIS really larger on the inside?" Andrew asked, looking at the seemingly innocuous yet out-of-place police box with unrestrained awe and curiosity.

"It is," The Doctor replied.

"Cool!" Andrew uttered.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Sara asked. "We've got a mission to finish, don't we?"

Omni-Buffy walked up to her earthly counterpart and Faith and gently tapped them on the forehead. Nonetheless, the gentle taps caused both Buffy and Faith to shiver and then convulse with light pouring out of their mouths and eyes. Immediately, Dawn, Giles, and Xander started toward Omni-Buffy. "What did you do to them?" Dawn asked.

"Gave them the power to tackle that army of uber-vamps The First is raising," Omni-Buffy replied. "And that power goes through the entire Slayer line, at least for now."

"Yeah . . ." Vi uttered, shivering like someone who'd just had her first kiss. "That's some power, all right. It's like my bones are shaking."

"Mine, too," Rhona admitted.

"Three," Kennedy joined in. "Feels like . . . someone kissing you right on the spot . . ."

"Hell, yeah," Faith agreed. "That's what I'm talking about."

"Gotta admit . . . it feels incredible," Buffy added. "Tingly, too. Like mouthwash."

Spider let his symbiotic suit form over his body, but it had taken a new, deadlier form. There was now chitinous armor over his chest resembling a hybrid of a spider and a ribcage, as well as over his shoulders and around his forearms, knees, and calves. The eyes of his mask were now just as black as the rest of the mask, visible only because of the white lining around them.

"Whoa . . . what's this?" Spider wondered aloud, startled at the new form his suit had taken. "You've . . . we've . . . evolved, haven't we?"

"Well, I'd better get ready, too," Tommy remarked. He stood up and drew his golden Power Morpher and thrust it out. "It's morphin' time! Dragonzord!" Jade fire and electricity clashed around his body before dispersing to reveal him in full Green Ranger uniform.

Sara let the Witchblade expand to cover her body, its organic metal shredding her clothes and replacing them with form-fitting silver-black armor. Her eyes briefly flashed an eldritch golden color as she smiled with wicked anticipation.

"I guess we're all ready to go, huh?" Rogue commented.

"Ready as we'll ever be," Kazuma replied, his eyes starting to shine with an unusual blue light.

"Let's get this over with," Faith said. "We've got uber-vamps to smash in."

~EXE~


	11. Zero Hour, Part One

Disclaimer: The various characters that appear in this story are the property of Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Top Cow Productions, Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, Saban Brands, the BBC, and others we cannot recall right now. What we do recall full well is that any and all characters you see here do not belong to either of us, and we make no money whatsoever from writing this story, nor do we receive other forms of material compensation. This is purely for self-amusement and hopefully the entertainment of our readership.

Author's note: This chapter will be exclusively dedicated to the origin of the new Zero Hour Justice League. You will see how the new team comes together to step into the shoes of their mentors and save their world from the threat of Parallax. The only question is, "Will they live up to their mentors' examples and save their world from Parallax, or will they fall just like their mentors?" You want to see the answer to that? Read on.

~EXE~

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 11: "Zero Hour, Part One"

A black-haired teenage boy stared out into the sunny horizon of the Hawaiian beach he was floating above. He wore a black T-shirt with a Superman shield on the front, but with black filling instead of yellow, and blue-gray cargo pants. "Today . . . is gonna be a good day," he said to himself.

This was Kon-El, Conner Kent, a Superboy engineered from the DNA of both Superman and a human being. Like his progenitor, he was a hero to millions the world over, and right now, he was a teenage boy enjoying a day at the beach. At least, he was enjoying it until a bat-shaped shadow came hovering over him, forcing him to look up and see a bat-shaped jet floating above him.

"Superboy, right?" a familiar voice came.

"Robin?" Conner asked.

"Not really," the voice replied, and out came a man dressed in a black suit with blue wing stripes stretching from a golden Superman shield on his front. He looked a great deal like Robin, only older and with wavier hair, plus a more birdlike mask over his eyes.

"Who are you?" Conner asked.

"Nightwing," the masked man with the Superman shield replied. "Mind if we talk? It's important."

"How important?" Conner interrogated.

"For starters, Superman is dead. The entire Justice League is dead," Nightwing answered. "Parallax killed them all. It's why I'm recruiting a new Justice League . . . and I want you on it."

"Superman's dead?" Conner repeated in dismay. "How is that even possible?"

"It is," Nightwing replied grimly. "I'm sorry."

Conner scanned Nightwing with his enhanced senses, looking for any sign that the mysterious man was lying. There were no signs, none at all, that what he was saying was anything less than the cold hard truth. A foreboding glare settled on his face once that realization dawned on him. "You're not the one who needs to be sorry," Conner grimly vowed.

"All right, then," Nightwing said. "Since you're on board, you might as well get inside. I'm gonna introduce you to some of your teammates."

Nightwing and Superboy both flew inside the bat-shaped jet, and that was when Conner saw Donna Troy, Wally West, and Garth. "Wonder Girl? Kid Flash? Aqualad?"

"Wonder Woman, Flash, and Aquaman now," Donna corrected. "And that makes you Superman now. I'm sorry, Conner."

"Like I told Nightwing, you're not the one who needs to be sorry," Conner answered grimly.

"At least we're together again," Wally remarked. "Small favors."

Conner saw a girl dressed nearly identically to Wally, albeit slightly reminiscent of Wally's Kid Flash days. "Who are you supposed to be? Girl Flash?"

"Iris," the female Flash replied. "Might as well call me that if you're not gonna call me Flash."

"How does that even work?" Superboy asked. Then he turned to look at Nightwing. "And why do you look like Robin, anyway?"

"I was Robin," Nightwing admitted. "My name comes from a legend of Krypton, and it's one that I've started living up to ever since I fell ass-backwards into Kryptonian powers back in my reality."

Iris smirked as she scoped Nightwing's backside behind her shades. "I'm also from another reality." She jerked her thumb at Wally. "This guy's my dad back where I'm from."

"Alternate realities, huh?" Superboy commented skeptically.

"Trust me, we didn't believe it at first, either," Wally replied. "It's kinda hard, seeing that this little hard-body next to me is actually the fruit of my loins from another version of reality."

"You're gross," Iris grumbled, punching Wally in the shoulder.

Nightwing spared a brief moment to scowl at Wally before getting serious again. "Look, right now we've got to find the rest of our new Justice League. Conner, is there a Miss Martian here in this world?"

"You mean M'gann?" Superboy surmised. "Yeah. She lives down on the farm with Ma and Pa . . . and Kara."

"Kara? As in Supergirl?" Nightwing asked.

"Yeah," Superboy replied. "Man, when she finds out about Clark . . ."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there, which should be in two more minutes," Nightwing answered.

"Two more minutes?" Superboy repeated. "Pretty fast jet you've got."

"Hypersonic transport," Nightwing explained. "Never go recruiting a new Justice League without it."

"That was a joke, right?" Wally asked.

"Maybe," Nightwing replied noncommittally.

Donna turned to Garth. "You haven't said anything since we got on this plane."

"Nothing to say," Garth answered, a downcast expression on his face. "I might very well be headed to my death, and I might very well have made a promise to Dolphin that I can't keep. It's taking everything I have not to just fall apart."

Donna took Garth's hand in hers, squeezing it comfortingly. "I'm here for you, Garth. Wally is, too. Dick and Roy will be as well."

Garth found it in himself to smile slightly. "Thanks."

"No problem," Donna replied.

"For trying," Garth amended. "I don't feel better, and yet, that you still tried to comfort me makes me feel a little better in spite of myself. What a paradox."

"Emotions are funny like that," Donna remarked simply.

~EXE~

As the jet came closer to the Kent Farm in Smallville, Conner turned to Nightwing. "Let me go alone. It's gonna be hard enough for them, hearing it from me."

"All right," Nightwing assented.

Superboy flew out of the Batjet and landed in the back of the Kent Farm before going to the backdoor and knocking. He was answered by Jonathan Kent, who eyed him curiously over his glasses. "Conner. What brings you here? I thought you'd still be in Hawaii soaking up the sun."

"It's about Clark, Pa," Conner replied sadly.

"Come inside," Jonathan immediately instructed, and Conner obeyed.

Martha Kent came down the steps and into the kitchen to greet their visitor. "Conner, it's good to see you again. How was Hawaii?"

"I don't think you'll find it so good to see me after you hear what I have to say, Ma," Conner remarked sadly.

"What happened?" Martha inquired.

"He says it's about Clark," Jonathan explained.

"He's dead," Conner replied. "Clark is dead. Him and the rest of the Justice League. Something called Parallax . . . it killed them. All of them."

Martha let out a choking gasp of grief, the kind that could only come from a mother who had just found out her child was dead. Without a word, Jonathan pulled her into his arms, letting her futilely repress the urge to cry into his chest. "No wonder Megan left so quickly . . ."

"What happened to her?" Conner asked.

"She suddenly collapsed, screaming about her Uncle J'onn," was the explanation from Jonathan. "She was crying and screaming and it was the most heartbreaking thing I ever saw. Then she changed back to her Martian form and flew away from the farm before Martha or I could really talk to her about what happened."

"Her psychic connection to J'onn . . . she must have felt him die," Conner murmured sorrowfully.

That was when a girl with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail and round glasses over her blue eyes burst into the house like a literal blur, practically tackling Conner in her shock and disbelief. "Kara!" Jonathan called out in warning.

"Who are your friends in the jet?!" she interrogated Conner, who was pinned to the wall. "Don't even think of lying to me, because I can see and hear them just fine!"

"Kara!" Jonathan called out again. "Let him go."

Kara dropped Conner, shaking with disbelief, grief, and anger. "Clark . . . he can't . . . no, no . . . this isn't . . ."

"Donna, Wally, Garth, Iris, and Nightwing," Conner answered Kara's earlier question, breathing hard. "Iris and Nightwing are from different universes, but Nightwing corresponds to Robin in his universe. We're putting together a new Justice League, to stop Parallax . . . to make him pay for what he did to Clark and Diana and J'onn and Bruce and the others . . . and to save our world."

Martha and Jonathan pulled Kara into their embrace, allowing her to let her grief out. Conner brought himself to his feet, waiting for Kara's tears to subside before he asked his own question.

"Where did M'gann go?"

"The Tamami Desert, probably," Jonathan replied. "It's her favorite spot on the planet."

"Yeah," Conner acknowledged. "It reminds her of Mars."

"Then that's where we're going," Kara declared, pulling herself gently from Jonathan and Martha's hug. "To find her, to find her and stop this Parallax monster, to make him pay . . ."

Jonathan looked solemnly at the two teenage Kryptonians. "Don't die, you two. Whatever you do, don't die. I can't . . . we can't lose more of our children."

"You won't," Kara vowed with grim resolve in her voice.

~EXE~

Superboy returned to the Batjet with Supergirl in full costume and a dejected expression. "You told them, huh?" Wally remarked.

"Yeah," Superboy replied sadly.

"Where's Miss Martian?" Wally asked.

"In the Tamami Desert," Superboy answered. "Her home away from home."

"In Australia," Nightwing filled in. "We'll fly down there, see if we can find her."

"In the state she's got to be in right now . . ." Superboy mumbled in a worried tone.

"We can cross that bridge when it comes down to it," Nightwing said. "Right now, we need you all in the new Justice League, and 'you all' includes her, too."

Superboy just looked out the window of the Batjet, deep in grief and thought. The grief was for Superman, who had been like a brother to him, and even a father in some ways. The thought was for Megan, a refugee from Mars who had been effectively adopted by the previous sole survivor of Mars, J'onn J'onzz. He pondered what her reaction might be to her recruitment for a new Justice League, spearheaded by an alternate-reality version of Robin that called himself Nightwing and had Superman's powers. For the sake of the world, he hoped he would be able to count on her being at his side.

Supergirl had removed her brown wig and glasses to reveal long blonde hair and glimmering blue eyes. She wore her usual uniform of a gold-trimmed blue half-shirt with Superman's shield emblazoned on the front, a pleated red miniskirt with a gold belt, red boots with gold trim, and a short red cape. She sat quietly and grimly in the Batjet, not really looking in anyone's direction. Vengeance burned almost literally in her eyes, and that was what was keeping her from falling apart completely in her grief.

~EXE~

True to Superboy's word, they did find the mournful Miss Martian in the Tamami Desert, hovering above the ground in quiet sorrow. "We'll talk to her," Superboy said, and he and Supergirl flew out of the Batjet to confront her directly. "M'gann."

"Conner, Kara," M'gann M'orzz replied, and the heaviness of her tone told Superboy that she had been crying just before he reached her.

"We're putting a team together," Superboy explained. "A new Justice League, to take down the monster that killed J'onn and Clark." His tone softened upon his next words. "This team is going to need you, M'gann. _I'm_ going to need you . . . please . . ."

"Conner . . ." M'gann whispered, and her clothes changed from an almost-cheerleader-style version of the Martian Manhunter's costume to a body-covering black uniform similar to a more feminized version of the Martian Manhunter's costume. Her expression hardened, red eyes full of cold determination. "Let's go."

"We're not alone," Supergirl observed, as she heard the whistling of a rapidly moving human-sized object in the air. A split-second later, her observation was validated by the arrival of a black-haired young man in what looked like a modified Green Lantern uniform.

"Nice, but is this a private party, or can any newbie Green Lantern join in?" the young man quipped. Superboy, Supergirl, and the newly rechristened Martian Manhunter turned to eye him directly.

"Who are you?" Supergirl asked.

"Kyle Rayner, new Green Lantern of Earth," the young man replied. "Only Green Lantern now, period."

"'Only Green Lantern'?" Superboy repeated skeptically.

"Parallax killed the others . . . all the others," Kyle explained. "This is the only power ring with any actual power left in it."

"A new Green Lantern, huh?" Nightwing remarked, coming out of the Batjet to see him. "Hi, Kyle. Nice to see you still exist here."

"Who are you?" Kyle asked. "And how do you know my name?"

"Nightwing, and it's a long story," Nightwing replied. "Suffice it to say, you and I know each other fairly well where I come from."

"You look . . . kind of like Robin," M'gann observed.

"Technically, I am, just from another universe," Nightwing explained briefly.

"Why are you wearing Superman's symbol and how are you floating like that?" M'gann questioned.

"Alternate universe," Nightwing replied, even more briefly than before.

"You know you just can't pull that out of your ass every time someone asks you a question," Wally dryly remarked.

Nightwing chuckled. "You're getting used to it alright."

"Yeah, but that's me," Wally rejoined. "Roll with the punches."

"Sure, but why don't we get inside the plane and you can explain yourself to the people who _haven't_ met you before?" Nightwing wryly suggested to Kyle.

"Where you headed to?" Kyle asked.

"I'm going to find Speedy and Robin," Nightwing replied. "And I'm going to get them to join us."

"Yeah, sounds about right," Kyle wryly remarked.

~EXE~

Within the alleyways of Star City, a red-clad archer was fighting off several thugs, having busted an illegal weapons shipment. They fired their guns at him, but his reflexes were sharp and his aim was even sharper as his arrows knocked their guns out of their hands. Once disarmed, the thugs were barely a threat to him as he struck them down with his bow and with brutally precise kicks and elbow jabs.

"That's all of them," he mumbled to himself, only for his keen eyes to spot someone trying to run away. "Ok, I missed one." He quickly nocked another arrow and fired it at the fleeing thug, catching him in the leg. "Ok, _now_ that's all of them."

At that moment, he heard slow clapping from the shadows. "All right, pal, you want some of this, too?" the red-clad archer challenged.

"Just impressed, is all," a familiar voice replied from those shadows. "Even in an alternate universe, you've still got your touch, Roy."

"Hey, Robin, ix-nay on the ames-nay, ok?" Roy Harper, also known as Speedy, warned.

"It's Nightwing, actually," the voice corrected as a young man stepped out of the shadows. He was about the same height and build as the Robin Speedy knew, even had the same hair color and near-identical facial features, but his costume was black with wing-like blue stripes extending from a golden Superman symbol.

"Dick? What happened to you?" Speedy asked.

"Long story," Nightwing replied. "To make it as short as I can, Ollie's dead. So's Dinah. The entire Justice League is."

"What?" Speedy uttered, disbelieving.

"It's the truth," Nightwing answered sorrowfully. "I saw it happen. I couldn't stop him . . ."

"Him who?" Speedy interrogated.

"Parallax," Nightwing replied. "He killed them. He killed them and the rest of the Justice League."

"How is that even possible?!" Speedy roared.

"I have more, but you're going to have to come with me," Nightwing said.

"And why the hell should I go with you?" Speedy asked. "Why should I even believe you?!"

"Because no matter what reality we're in, you are my best friend, Roy Harper," Nightwing answered somberly.

Speedy and Nightwing stared into each other's masked eyes for a long, tense moment . . . and Speedy broke first. "You're not lying, are you?"

"No," Nightwing whispered. "I'm sorry, Roy . . ."

Speedy turned away. "Let's just go. You can explain everything there. I'd rather not have these jackasses wake up in time to hear about Green Arrow and Black Canary being dead."

"You did a number on them, that's for sure," Nightwing remarked, in a dry attempt to change the subject.

~EXE~

"So now all that's left is for us to find Dick and bring him in on this?" Speedy asked.

"Yeah . . ." Nightwing replied as he piloted the Batjet. "He'll probably take it as hard as I did."

"I'm sure enough," Donna agreed. "The more I look at you, the more of him I see in you."

"How are you taking it, Donna?" Speedy asked, looking at the former Wonder Girl.

"I'm hanging in there, Roy," Donna replied. "Thanks for asking."

Speedy then turned to the new Green Lantern in their midst, Kyle Rayner. "I'm still not gonna get used to you wearing Hal's ring."

"You don't have to," Kyle replied. "I'm still not used to it, either."

"You think he's gonna believe you?" Speedy wondered.

"He'll have to," Nightwing replied. "M'gann can show him if he refuses to."

"You sure that's such a good idea?" Garth asked.

"It's a last resort," Nightwing replied.

"Why are you playing with your ring?" Speedy asked Kyle, who was using his power ring to animate various cartoony doodles.

"I'm an artist," Kyle answered.

"Starving artist?" Speedy mocked.

"Ha, ha, very funny," Kyle sniped.

"An artist's touch might be what the ring needs," Donna observed. "After all, imagination and willpower are what bring out its power."

"Yeah, if you say so," Speedy conceded with slight irritation in his voice.

"Jealous?" Wally asked.

"I'm not gonna get used to you wearing Barry's costume," Speedy replied, diverting the topic of conversation.

"I'm not gonna get used to it, either," Wally admitted. "I always used to dream of becoming the Flash . . . but I didn't want it to happen like this."

"Nobody wants it to happen like this," Speedy commiserated. "But that's the world we live in, even if it is Parallax's construct."

"Construct or not, it's your world," Iris said. "And you can still make it a good world to live in . . . so long as you don't let that psycho destroy everything all over again."

Speedy chuckled. "Nice speech." He chuckled again. "Not gonna get used to Wally settling down with a daughter, even if you _are_ from an alternate universe. Wonder how he'd feel about you and Nightwing."

"He'd have no choice but to grin and bear it," Iris replied, "because I'm not letting go of Dick so easily."

Speedy nearly burst into laughter, but he contained it in a smirk. "Uh-huh, you sound like that kind of girl."

Iris smirked back, gazing at him from behind her red sunglasses. "Is that supposed to mean anything?"

Speedy chuckled. "Nothing at all."

"Ok, if you two are done flirting with each other back there, we're just over Bludhaven," Nightwing called out.

"Jealous man, aren't you, Dick?" Speedy taunted.

"I try not to be," Nightwing answered with a slight smirk in his tone.

Meanwhile, Donna and M'gann were on either side of Supergirl, and M'gann looked at Kara with a curious smirk. "You've been looking at him."

"What? No," Kara denied. "It's just weird, is all. He looks pretty much exactly like Robin, sounds like him, too, but his costume, the way he moves . . . and having Kryptonian powers, it's all different."

"But in a good way," M'gann remarked, her smirk turning teasing.

Supergirl glared hotly at M'gann, belied only by the blush on her face. "Are you reading my mind?"

"No, but it's really obvious you're checking him out," M'gann replied.

"He's a taken man, you know," Donna commented with a sly look at Supergirl.

Supergirl groaned. "What is wrong with me? I'm supposed to focus on taking down that monster Parallax, and now all I'm doing is drooling over Nightwing."

"Transference, I think," Donna remarked. "He's Robin's counterpart, and you used to have a pretty big crush on him, if I recall . . ."

"Shut up, Donna," Supergirl grumbled, though there was no anger in it, just quiet annoyance and a smile she couldn't quite stop.

~EXE~

Bludhaven was many things, the vast majority of them not very good. It was home to the dregs that even Gotham wouldn't take, home to corruption and urban blight even worse than Gotham's, and host to some of the worst criminals and villains that were smart enough to stay under Batman's radar. Of course, that didn't stop Batman's ex-protégé Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin, from moving in and straightening things out the hard way.

Indeed, Robin's road to redeeming Bludhaven had been even harder than Batman's in Gotham. For one, there was truly no such thing as an honest cop in Bludhaven, just varying kinds of corrupt and dirty. The rank and file consisted of the stupid kind of corrupt, easy to pick off and scare into submission. The ones who truly stood out in the scumbag pile were the ones who were smart enough to manipulate a broken system as opposed to just randomly looting whatever they could get like the more foolish rank and file.

Nonetheless, Robin persevered, and had adapted his costume for the occasion. No longer did he wear "pixie boots" and a bright yellow cape over a red tunic and green briefs. The only thing remaining from the old outfit was the red tunic, which now had full sleeves. He wore a pair of armored pants, colored such a dark green that it took intense light to reveal it, and black boots. His utility belt had been modified for a slimmer design that carried less but allowed him greater mobility as befitting his acrobatic prowess. Black armored gloves covered his hands and forearms, and a black cape with yellow lining rested over his shoulders, designed to expand into gliding wings when infused with an electrical current. His eyes were concealed as always behind a black domino mask with whiteout lenses equipped with all sorts of visual enhancers and scanners. His main weapon was a quarterstaff that could be broken into dual fighting sticks if the quarterstaff proved too unwieldy for that particular fight.

Right now, he was putting that bifurcation function to good use, as he twisted and contorted and flipped around the police thugs attacking him. He'd spotted them in the middle of a shakedown and decided to put the fear of God – or the next best thing, himself – into them. While he'd succeeded in diverting their attention away from the corner shop owner they were trying to shake down, he had not quite succeeded in scaring them. To the contrary, he had made them very angry, cutting them off from the trough like that, and they wanted payback.

Too bad none of them could actually hit a moving target, particularly a target moving as fast as Robin was, to save their lives. Hell, the only targets he suspected they'd ever hit were either paper targets on the police practice range or arrestees they'd decided to save some time and paperwork on by just shooting in the back of the head. With the optical enhancers on his mask activated, Robin could see the bullets lit up like they were tracer rounds, which definitely aided his efforts in dodging the thugs' admittedly poor aim.

Getting tired of dodging, Robin smacked a gun out of one thug's hand with one of his sticks and then whirled around so forcefully that his cape smacked another thug into the ground. A third thug tried to fire at him, but Robin flung a throwing bird at him hard enough to knock his gun out of his hand and cut into said hand with its sharp edges. While momentarily disabled by the pain of his bleeding hand, Robin was able to literally beat the thug to the ground. Hearing the warning sound of a newly chambered round, he back-flipped over the fourth and last thug's attempt to shoot him from behind, tackling him to the ground using the force of gravity from his own descent.

"Always the same with you guys," Robin remarked, finally speaking. "Why do you even bother getting out of bed in the morning? You just know I'm gonna spot you and kick your asses." He looked back at the shop owner, who'd been watching the fight from a safe distance, in a manner of speaking. "I'd say call 911, but we both know that wouldn't do much good here."

He pulled out a grapnel gun from the back of his belt and fired it at an overhang, lifting himself into the air and giving him enough altitude to do some gliding. It was a lot easier than trying to jump from rooftop to rooftop with a cape in the way. He'd probably have to ditch it, but the question was how to compensate, because the cape _was_ very useful nighttime camouflage when folded around his body like a cloak.

He didn't have time to ponder this further, because he saw someone standing on a rooftop, looking as though he was waiting for someone or something. With a quick look through his optical scanners, Robin saw that the person was definitely male and dressed in a skintight black bodysuit with blue wings outstretched from a golden Superman emblem, the symbol of the House of El. Like Robin, he wore a black domino mask, but his was shaped more like a bird in flight.

_He looks . . . just like me,_ Robin realized, as he examined the black-clad figure more closely.

Soon enough, his glide carried him right to his mysterious lookalike in the black Superman outfit and he landed in a crouch, his cape flowing over him much like Batman's had for him. "Who are you?"

"Nice entrance," the lookalike remarked. "Love the theatrics. You do take after Batman, I've gotta admit. More than I did."

"You're talking like you know him, but I've never seen you before in my life," Robin retorted. "I'll ask again: Who are you?"

"Richard John Grayson," the lookalike replied.

"That's not . . ." Robin started to say, but cut himself off for fear of giving away his secret identity.

The lookalike, unperturbed by this, just reached up and removed his mask, revealing a face identical to Robin's but some years older, and his blue eyes speaking of terrible sadness. "Not possible?" the Dick Grayson lookalike replied. "It is. Ever heard of alternate realities?"

"Yeah," Robin admitted. "So what? You're _from_ one of those alternate realities, and in that one, you become Superman?"

"First part, yes, second, no, I just have his powers," Robin's lookalike clarified. "And I'm here to help you save your reality from being wiped out by Parallax so he can start over with a whole new universe."

"Parallax?" Robin repeated.

"He killed the Justice League," the lookalike replied. "All of the Justice League, including Batman."

"Batman?! _He killed Batman?!_ How?!" Robin questioned his mirror image, denial and rage exploding from him.

"Parallax has the power to reshape and undo reality as we know it," the lookalike replied. "He's done it God only knows how many times, and he's getting ready to do it again. This time will be the last time, because then there won't be any reality left to save, for any of us. That's why I'm trying to stop him, that's why I'm gathering a new Justice League, to take up where Batman and the others left off. You all united . . . are the only chance this world has of surviving."

Robin just stared starkly at his black-clad doppelganger. "Scanning me, aren't you? Trying to see if I'm lying? I'm not. You know that. I wouldn't lie about _this._"

Robin's posture sagged slightly, as this truth fully hit him. "I know . . . because _I_ wouldn't lie about something like _that,_ either. Who else is in this new Justice League of yours?"

"Wally, Donna, Roy, Garth, Superboy, Supergirl, Miss Martian, and a new Green Lantern," Robin's double replied. "We just need you to round it out . . . because this new League is going to need a leader – and if I know me as well as I do, you're that leader."

"Who's going to take the Teen Titans seriously as the new Justice League?" Robin asked.

"You'll see," the "other" Dick Grayson replied. He pointed at the sky, where the Batjet shimmered into visibility. "They're all up there, ready and waiting for you. What do you say?"

Robin steeled his features into a mask of resolve. "What do I call _you?_"

The other Dick Grayson smiled just before putting his mask back on. "You can call me . . . Nightwing."


	12. Zero Hour, Part Two

Disclaimer: The characters seen in this chapter and in future chapters are property of DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Dark Horse Comics, Top Cow Productions, Saban Brands, the BBC, Tite Kubo, Shonen Jump, Funimation, and many more. My partner in this writing, JOUNOUCHI-sama, and I do not receive any sort of profit or other material compensation for writing this story and thrive solely on the satisfaction of our readers and reviewers.

Author's note: This was originally supposed to be one chapter. Of course, introducing all of the characters within the nascent Justice League and giving you, the readers, a feel for them as they are in this universe took longer than I anticipated and I didn't want to make a super-long chapter. As such, the full assembly of the new Zero Hour Justice League and the battle with Parallax had to be postponed to this chapter. Lucky for you, my loyal readers, I'll be able to release both of them as a double feature Thanksgiving Day present to you all as a sign of my appreciation. In the meantime, enough talk, time to get this started.

"The Other Exiles"

Chapter 12: "Zero Hour, Part Two"

~EXE~

Inside the Batjet, Robin and Nightwing got surprised looks from the rest of the passengers. "Wow . . . it really _is_ like seeing double," Roy commented.

"I don't think I really grasped just how much . . . how eerie this whole thing was . . . until now," Donna admitted with a slight stammer.

"Two of you!" Kara exclaimed in astonishment. "And aside from one of you having Kryptonian powers, you're almost exactly alike! Your faces, your movements, your heartbeats . . ." She trailed off, a blush coloring her cheeks.

"Kara, are you sure you're not X-raying us where you're not supposed to be?" Nightwing teased.

Robin looked aghast at Nightwing, while Kara turned slightly redder. "Yes . . ."

Iris chuckled wickedly. "I know, I know . . . two Dick Graysons for the price of one. Sure would be enough to make _me_ happy."

"She from the alternate universe where Wally's a girl?" Robin asked Nightwing. "If so . . ."

"My daughter, actually," Wally corrected. "But you're right about the whole alternate universe thing. She and Nightwing met on his first mission and now they're shacking up across time and space. Beats the hell out of me how he does it."

"You're dressed up as the Flash," Robin pointed out.

"I _am_ the Flash now," Wally replied. "Not exactly how I imagined it to turn out."

Robin turned to M'gann. "Nice outfit, Meg."

"Call me the Martian Manhunter," M'gann replied, as she shifted her hair into a high ponytail and her figure into a more womanly frame.

"Whoa," Robin uttered. "What was that about?"

"Getting serious," M'gann answered.

"Yeah, that's 'serious,' all right," Wally remarked flirtatiously, eyeing M'gann's increased "attributes."

Conner scowled slightly at Wally, and that was when Robin spotted Kyle. "You must be the new Green Lantern Nightwing told me about," Robin remarked.

"Yeah," Kyle replied. "Name's Kyle Rayner."

"Where'd you get the ring from?" Robin asked.

"It was Hal Jordan's ring," Kyle explained, "and now the only Green Lantern power ring that has any charge left since Parallax sucked up all the green energy from the Central Power Battery on Oa."

"Parallax . . ." Nightwing repeated. He gazed soberly at the team he had assembled. "I've got something to confess to you all. Parallax _is_ Hal Jordan."

Gasps of shock, horror, and disbelief rang throughout the Batjet. "How the hell is that even possible?" Wally asked. "I thought Parallax killed Hal Jordan just like he did the rest of the Justice League!"

"The Hal Jordan Parallax killed was a construct created to give the Justice League a Green Lantern," Nightwing explained. "Parallax has been remaking and destroying this universe for who only knows how long. It started when Coast City was obliterated by Mongul and the Cyborg Superman, and when the Guardians of Oa refused to give Hal the power he sought to restore Coast City and everyone in it, Hal snapped. He began attacking the other Green Lanterns and taking their rings to enhance his own powers, cutting a swath of death and destruction through the universe to get to Oa. When he did, he killed the Guardians and drained the Central Power Battery to turn himself into a near-omnipotent being called Parallax, using his new power to try to reshape the universe to his own liking.

"We stopped him before he could succeed . . . in my world, anyway. In this one, he was more than successful, but since the results were never 'perfect' enough for him, he ended up destroying and remaking this world again and again. Because of that, the cumulative effects of what he's done are now threatening to completely unravel reality. Iris and I were sent here to stop it, and the only way to do that is to stop Parallax."

"So our lives . . . all our lives . . . are just lies? Constructs? Figments of a monster's imagination?" Garth uttered in quiet despair.

"No," Donna staunchly denied. "They're not just constructs. Parallax may have recreated this world so many times before, but he is not our god or our master. Our memories, our lives, our emotions, our friends, our families, they're not lies. They happened. _We_ happened, and I will be damned before I let him take that from me without giving him a fight."

"She's right," Kyle agreed. "This world may be a construct, but as a Green Lantern, a construct has to be held together by willpower, so we've gotta show Parallax that we have more willpower than him."

"You haven't even been a Green Lantern for five minutes," Roy dryly remarked.

"I've been a Green Lantern for more than _five_ minutes, thank you very much," Kyle retorted.

"Fifteen?" Roy jibed.

"You guys get along about as well as you did back in my world," Nightwing commented with an amused smile.

"Then let's get to the cave," Robin said. "I've got some things to pick up. Then we can hit the Fortress of Solitude, and visit Hephaestus's forge to get him to whip something up for Donna. If you want to pick up anything from Green Arrow's old armory, Roy . . ."

"Yeah," Roy replied. "But why the Fortress of Solitude?"

"Because there needs to be a Superman," Nightwing said. "And every Superman gets their start in the Fortress of Solitude."

~EXE~

Inside the Batcave, Robin immediately went for the supercomputer and began inputting seemingly random codes. Once he was finished, the computer began to speak. _"Optimizing of armor construction in progress,"_ it said in a mechanical voice that sounded suspiciously like Alfred.

One of the walls of the Batcave slid forward, revealing a standing panel with an upside-down crystal dome hovering 8 feet above where a person would be standing. Framing that same standing panel was a pair of computerized panels roughly the height of a grown man, with digital patterns moving across the scanning screens embedded within the panels.

Robin inputted more codes and a costume blueprint began to emerge on the screen of the supercomputer. The costume was Batman's, but with shorter ears, a bat symbol without the yellow circle, a utility belt with a bat-shaped buckle similar to the symbol on the costume's front, and shorter gloves, though retaining the customary blade-like flanges.

"What is that supposed to be?" Wally asked.

"It's like a 3D printer, only better . . . way better," Robin replied. "This is going to make me a new Batman suit, one that'll fit me since . . . I don't exactly have Bruce's physique."

"Yeah, you're all lean and wiry and acrobatic," Iris commented with a flirtatious smirk.

Nightwing chuckled. "Is it possible to be jealous of yourself?"

"Clark used to have those moments," Kara admitted. "With Lois and all . . . oh, God, Lois . . . what am I gonna tell her?" Before she could melt down, Conner put his hand on her shoulder.

"We'll work that out after we stop Parallax," the Boy of Steel said.

"Parallax," Roy repeated. "Still can't believe he used to be Hal. He was like my cool uncle. And Ollie was his best friend and he still . . ." He paused, trying to gather himself. "How many times? How many times did Hal – did Parallax – kill Ollie? Kill Dinah? All of us?"

"Last time was the last time," M'gann answered bluntly. "He won't get another try."

"The Omniverse can't afford him trying one more time," Kyle added. "Otherwise it all falls apart, for everybody everywhere, every _when._"

As the discussion continued, Robin stepped into the outfitting area, having stripped down to barely anything but his skivvies, causing the young women nearby to do multiple takes. "You're certainly not shy about putting it all out there, Dick," Wally quipped, emphasizing that last word in a very innuendo-laced tone.

"Ha, ha, very funny, Wally," Robin replied, seemingly oblivious to the girls giving him _very_ approving looks when they thought they could get away with it.

"How does he do it?" Roy asked. "How the hell does he do it?"

"I don't even know what I'm doing," Nightwing replied with a shrug.

"Keep telling yourself that," Conner grumbled, sounding a bit miffed at how his cousin and his girlfriend were eyeing Robin.

"_Commencing armor construction and fitting now,"_ the supercomputer announced.

"You notice that it sounds kinda like Alfred talking?" Donna wondered aloud.

The first thing to assemble on Robin's body was a frame to hold the armor. Next, the armor itself began to assemble over the framing suit, starting with a full-sleeved tunic for the torso followed by armored pants and a guard for the groin that suspiciously resembled a pair of black briefs. Black boots covered his feet and half his calves, and black gloves with bladed flanges extending from the cuffs covered his hands and lower forearms. Then there was the utility belt, wrapping around his midsection before enclosing with the nearly gleaming bat-buckle front and center.

The armored black cowl covered his face, concealing his hair in its pointy-eared grip and his eyes behind milky whiteout lenses with so many optical enhancements wired into them it wasn't even funny. Finally, the scalloped black cape wrapped itself around his shoulders like the darkest of security blankets, and it might as well have been one, for it concealed everything when properly worn and was heavily armored for how otherwise lightweight it was.

"Whoa . . ." Robin uttered, flexing his hands inside his gloves. "This fits. It really fits . . ." As he spoke, his voice was almost unconsciously deepening into the familiar low rasping growl of the Batman.

"Is that still you in there, Dick?" Garth wondered.

"Yeah, because you sound just like Batman," Kyle added.

"I _am_ Batman," Dick growled, before his lips curled into a smirk. "And I am Dick Grayson as well. That won't fade so easily."

"That's a relief," Donna commented, smiling warmly. "I'd hate to see you fade away behind that cape and cowl."

"I don't fade that easily," Dick replied with an equally warm smile.

"Ok, enough with the mushy crap already," Roy grumbled, but there was no real anger in it, just determination to get out there and stop Parallax from destroying their world again.

"You're right," Dick admitted, and he slipped back into the Batman voice. "Let's go."

~EXE~

Their next stop was Star City, where Roy raided Ollie's armory to put together a veritable arsenal for himself. By the time he was done, he wore a forest green hooded vest and pants with lighter green inset trim and matching archer's gauntlets. A pair of optical lenses similar to a hybrid of goggles and sunglasses covered his eyes and a quiver full of high-tech arrows rested on his back. A smaller crossbow was hidden on his back beneath the quiver and a second crossbow, this one collapsible, was mounted on his right wrist.

"Whoa," Garth uttered once he saw Roy.

"Someone's looking badass," Wally complimented.

Donna slightly blushed, checking out Roy's well-muscled arms bared by his new costume. "Is that how you're going out as the new Green Arrow?"

"Yes, it is, Wonder Woman," Roy rejoined with an impish grin.

"So be it, Green Arrow," Nightwing remarked with an equally impish grin. "Ollie would be proud."

"For the sake of the world, I'd better prove you right," the new Green Arrow replied soberly.

~EXE~

Following that, they visited the Fortress of Solitude, where Conner and Kara listened to "Superman's Last Will and Testament." Out of respect, Nightwing had made sure everyone in the nascent Justice League let the two Kryptonians be while they listened to Clark Kent's final words. When they finally came out, their faces were full of steely resolve, puns fully unintended . . . and they had dressed themselves in new costumes.

Conner's was modeled after Superman's, but the "S" was sharper and more angular, not to mention set in a black background. He also wore a red belt in place of red trunks, and the suit seemed almost armored in places. Kara's suit was also modeled after Superman's, with a similarly sharp-angled S-shield, but longer, nearly thigh-high red boots and a leotard with a red bottom as opposed to a blue half-shirt and a red miniskirt.

"Really showing off those legs, huh, Kara?" Wally remarked, eliciting a cold stare from Kara.

"Keep your eyes in your head, Wally, unless you want a refresher course on what mine can do," Kara retorted, though a smile did creep up on her face.

Nightwing chuckled. "What are you gonna call yourself, Kara?"

Kara smirked. "I'm too old to be calling myself Super_girl._" She let out a confident chuckle. "It's Super_woman._"

"She is Superwoman, watch her soar," Iris quipped.

"Superwoman," Donna repeated, as if tasting the word. "I like it."

"And let me guess, Conner, you're Superman," Batman surmised.

"That would be the size of it, yeah," Conner confirmed.

M'gann gave a comforting look at the newly minted Superman. "You'll make him proud, Conner."

"Thank you, M'gann," Conner replied with a gentle tone. "You'll make J'onn proud, too."

~EXE~

The new Justice League took a trip to Themyscira, with Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Arrow, Nightwing, Kyle, and Garth staying in the Batjet out of respect. As such, Donna was accompanied by Iris, Superwoman, and the Martian Manhunter onto the Amazons' island, greeted by Hippolyta's guards – and Artemis.

"I see you brought more women this time," Artemis dryly remarked.

"I'm here for the forge to equip myself for the battle to come," Donna replied.

"Very well," Artemis responded. "Phillipus will escort you." At that, she gestured to the dusky-skinned Amazon woman in gold warrior garb. The woman nodded and escorted Donna, Kara, Iris, and M'gann to the forge.

"You might want to stay outside, Meg," Kara advised, remembering the Martian hypersensitivity to flame or intense heat. M'gann nodded, feeling the heat from the forge even from outside, and hung back as Donna, Kara, and Iris entered.

The three young women found a young-looking brunette working over the forge. "Hard at work, I see," Donna greeted.

"Yes . . . it helps me focus," Io replied.

"I understand . . . how important Diana was to you," Donna spoke in consolation.

"She was important to all of us, Donna," Io answered calmly, though there was a slight tremor in her voice. "And I've been hard at work, as you put it, making you some new armor. Better armor. If you're going to be Wonder Woman, as the denizens of Man's World called her . . ."

"Yeah," Donna admitted.

"I never understood the proclivity in Man's World for such sobriquets," Io admitted.

"They sound cool," Iris replied simply. "That's why."

"Cool, huh?" Io repeated, sounding intrigued. "I suppose by that, you mean 'awe-inspiring' or 'impressive' or 'striking.'"

"Yeah, those work, too," Iris conceded.

Io finished quickly enough, revealing Donna's armor to her. "You're welcome to try it on. I just cooled it, though, so you might want to be careful."

Donna gently and gratefully took the armor from Io and donned it in a version of Diana's familiar spinning transformation. When it ended, Donna could be clearly seen in a red bustier with black starfield print, an eagle-shaped golden breastplate, and a red battle skirt. Golden armor covered her shoulders and golden combat sandals covered her feet and wrapped around her calves. A golden tiara with sharp edges and a red star in the center covered her forehead and golden war bracelets covered her forearms. Completing the ensemble was a gold lariat with divine energy practically vibrating off it.

"How does it feel?" Io asked.

". . . Powerful," Donna replied almost breathlessly.

"You look like you just had one hell of a rush," Iris observed.

"Feels like it, too," Donna admitted. "But I'm ready." She looked back at Io. "Thank you, Io. I'm ready to be Wonder Woman now."

"You sure are," Kara agreed with an approving smirk.

"As I am certain," Io supplemented, smiling with wonder.

~EXE~

"Whoa, you're glowing, Donna!" Roy exclaimed when he saw the new Wonder Woman reenter the Batjet.

"Really, Roy?" Donna asked with a raised eyebrow. "Is that the best you got?"

"No, seriously, Donna . . ." Roy uttered. Calming himself somewhat, he went on. "That new armor really brings out your best features."

Donna chuckled. "You sure know how to make a girl feel beautiful, Roy." She spotted Garth. "When'd you get the new outfit, Garth?"

Garth was wearing a wetsuit that had a black stripe outlined in white running down the middle of the entire outfit. The sides and sleeves of the wetsuit were colored red, and the outsides of the wetsuit's pants were colored blue, corresponding to his old colors as Aqualad. In the center of the wetsuit's waist was a silvery "A" buckle in the style of what had once adorned Orin's Aquaman costume.

"While you were getting busy in Themyscira, Dick flew us out so we could have Garth make himself a new outfit," Wally explained.

"Getting busy?" Kara repeated skeptically.

"Uh, yeah . . . bad choice of words," Wally admitted sheepishly.

Iris chuckled. "I would have asked about that, but I didn't want to get my head knocked off. It's way too pretty to be an ornament."

Nightwing chuckled slightly, but his expression soon hardened to the point of nearly mirroring the new Batman's. "It's time to get serious. These are the ultimate stakes here, and all reality's on the line. You ready to be the Justice League this world needs?"

Resolve could be seen in the faces and eyes of everyone on the jet in spite of how relaxed they had seemed before. "We're ready," was the short response from Conner, the new Superman.

Batman nodded stoically, his jaw set in an expression of grim resolve. "Let's save the world."

~EXE~

It didn't take long for them to find Parallax, as he had gone directly to Coast City and was radiating emerald energy like a twisted beacon. "Parallax!" Superman declared. "We know who you are, we know who you were, and we know what you plan to do! We also know one more thing – we _will_ stop you!"

"Conner, Conner, Conner," Parallax mocked. "And all dressed up in Daddy's clothes, too." He snorted. "Just because you're dressed like him doesn't make you Superman. I should know, I fought beside him for years."

"And you murdered him!" Superman roared angrily. "Just like you murdered the rest of the League! Just like you murdered this world, so many times!"

"Ah, the newbie tell you that?" Parallax asked mockingly. "Did he get that story from the Guardians? Arrogant little blue men, thinking they could master the universe with no input from puny-minded mortals like us. Showed them, didn't I?"

"Murderer!" Kara roared and flew at Parallax at full hypersonic speed, shattering the sound barrier as she intended to do to Parallax's jaw. Alas, Parallax warped into insubstantiality before rematerializing to grab her by the cape, pulling so hard he was practically choking her with her own cape. Undeterred, Kara glared straight at him and her eyes literally burned into him with her heat vision, forcing him to let go of her as she twisted in midair for a powerful kick to his face.

"Nice try," Parallax taunted, and created green chains to ensnare her. "For the record, I appreciate your new taste in costumes. Kryptonian war garb, perhaps?"

Martian Manhunter telekinetically assaulted Parallax, bombarding him with psychic force blasts that practically disintegrated him . . . only for the disintegration to actually be Parallax dispersing himself. Visible as only a noxious green cloud, he engulfed the Martian Manhunter, who generated a telekinetic force field around herself as soon as she was aware of what he was trying to do. Just in time, too, as the Parallax cloud ignited itself in an attempt to set her on fire, something averted, if barely, by her force shield. However, the heat was something that could not be as easily deflected, and both M'gann and Parallax knew it.

Fortunately, so did Superman, and he flew into the cloud and spun at super-speed to force Parallax to disperse his cloud form. As Parallax dispersed, he rapidly reformed into his human shape and punched Superman hard enough to send him flying across the city. At that same moment, a concentrated tidal wave crashed into Parallax at the direction of the new Aquaman, Garth, only to be dispelled by radiating emerald force coming from Parallax.

Two red blurs attacked Parallax, the Flashes Wally and Iris, circling and striking again and again too fast for most to follow. However, the dual accelerated assault hit a sudden block when Parallax shifted his density to become as hard as diamond, knocking both speedsters for a loop, particularly as Parallax hit _them_ so hard they made craters in the ground.

At that moment, an explosive arrow flew at Parallax, aimed right for his cloaked head . . . only for Parallax to catch it and throw it right at Donna, who blocked it with her war bracelets. Said bracelets formed an energy shield upon being clashed together, a shield that was able to deflect the detonation from the arrowhead. Despite her defense, Parallax charged through the explosion to punch Donna, the force of the blow almost more than the aegis field could withstand. Eventually, the barrier shattered with such a shockwave that it blew both Donna and Parallax back.

"Didn't that ring choose you for a reason?" Batman asked Kyle back inside the Batjet.

"Yeah," Kyle muttered in response.

"Then go in," Batman ordered. "This is no time for fear."

Kyle stared at Batman for a moment, contemplating those words, and then flew out of the jet, glowing brightly. That glow began to take a more definitive shape, resembling a high-tech armor bearing a lance and riding some kind of gliding machine. As the construct armor more fully assembled itself over Kyle, he accelerated faster and faster until he was in striking range of Parallax.

"Hey!" Kyle shouted as he moved to stab Parallax with the lance, only for Parallax to disperse the lance. "What the –?!"

"I've got a lot more experience with that emerald energy than you," Parallax taunted. "And a lot more of it in me than whatever you've got in that piddling ring of yours."

"This 'piddling ring' stands for something!" Kyle retorted. "Something you betrayed!" He attempted to attack again, only to be blocked by Parallax's shield, which the emerald-powered entity then rammed into Kyle's face.

"The Guardians betrayed _me!_" Parallax snapped. "I gave all I had, but the condescending little bastards just looked down their noses and were content to let millions of lives go lost because 'that was just the way of things!' Well, no more! _I_ define the way of things now, and if you stand in my way, _you can die!_" With a blast of emerald energy strengthened by his rage and hate, Parallax blasted Kyle and the rest of the Justice League far away.

At that moment, a blur flew from the Batjet and rammed into Parallax with hypersonic force. Not stopping there, the blur ricocheted off a nearby skyscraper and struck Parallax again, repeating the process across the wreckage of the battlefield until Parallax put it to a stop by punching the blur in mid-strike, revealing that it was a hyper-acrobatic Nightwing. Knocked to the ground by the sudden impact, Nightwing barely had time to roll back onto his feet before Parallax was on him again.

"I see you . . . I see what you are . . . you're not from this universe . . . you are an interloper, you and the girl Flash," Parallax snarled. "You were the one who brought them all together, weren't you? Filled their heads with ideas of stopping me, of defying me, of standing up for their universe even though I was the one who created this universe. You're fighting a lost cause. I will not be stopped, and a universe with no fear, no pain, no suffering, no loss . . . will be in my grasp."

"And no choice!" Nightwing retorted, striking Parallax with a powerful burst of heat vision that singed even Parallax's defenses. "Just to let you know, you've got a special parting gift coming down for you!"

Parallax looked up and saw a glowing star growing bigger and bigger in the sky. His eyes narrowed as he realized what that "star" actually was. "Dick Grayson, you suicidal idiot," he whispered menacingly.

Indeed, the star was the League Watchtower, removed from Earth orbit and crashing down at terminal velocity toward Parallax. "A fitting end," Batman declared. "As the Justice League died by your hand, you die by the hand of the League. If hell will take you, Parallax, see you there."

And then the Watchtower crashed into Parallax with such a massive detonation that it nearly flattened the entirety of Coast City's midtown. Nightwing had barely been able to evade the epicenter in time and even then he was roughly buffeted by the residual shockwaves. In the end, his costume was torn and his mask had been almost burned off. Calming himself for a moment, he listened for the heartbeats of the rest of the Justice League and Iris, and was relieved when he saw a faint green glow.

"Kyle . . ." Nightwing murmured.

"Wow . . . didn't know I could do that," Kyle uttered underneath the green energy barrier that encompassed the Justice League, even a Batman in scorched armor and a singed Green Arrow.

"Willpower, Kyle," Batman remarked. "It's all about willpower."

"Speaking of willpower, who told you to pull such a suicidal stunt?" Donna angrily asked him.

"Nobody," Batman replied.

"You really think that's gonna kill him?" Martian Manhunter asked.

"No," Batman admitted, "but it should slow him down, make him burn up his reserves."

"You'd better be right," Wally groaned, "because it doesn't look like he's ready to stop."

Indeed, Parallax was far from ready to stop. His form rose like some kind of hellish green specter, advancing furiously upon the Justice League. "Why is it that none of you understand what I'm trying to do?" he asked bitterly.

"Maybe because it involves tearing down our world and taking all of reality down with it!" Green Arrow answered defiantly.

That response prompted Parallax to throw a blast of green fire at the insouciant emerald archer, intent on making him the first example of what happened to those that defied him. However, the Green Arrow was guarded by the Green Lantern, who took the fire blast ring first. "What are you doing?" Donna asked.

"Parallax got his power from absorbing all the green energy in the Central Power Battery," Kyle explained. "I'm taking back as much of it as I can!"

"You want my power, newbie?" Parallax taunted. "Then take it!" With that, he began pouring more green fire after Kyle, the intent obviously being to overload Kyle's ring and burn it out if not kill Kyle himself on account of how much power he was trying to absorb. Kyle just kept on absorbing Parallax's power.

"It's all about willpower, right?" Kyle asked, though it sounded more like a statement than a question. "You're expecting my willpower to run out before yours does, aren't you, Parallax? Not gonna happen, dreg!" As he shouted those last four words, the emerald fire he was channeling from Parallax coalesced around him into a viridian inferno that completely engulfed him.

"What is this?!" Parallax exclaimed in astonishment.

"In brightest day . . . in blackest night . . . let no evil escape my sight," a voice that sounded like and yet unlike Kyle intoned from within the emerald flames. "Let those who worship evil's might . . . beware my power . . . _**Green Lantern's light!**_" With those final three words, the green flame surrounding Kyle dispersed in a violent blast, revealing a rather changed Kyle Rayner.

No longer did he wear his customized Green Lantern uniform. Now, he wore a skintight black costume with a glowing green circle framed by green trim on his shoulders that formed a lantern's shape around that circle. The black of his costume was covered in a starfield pattern akin to that on Donna's Wonder Woman armor, and his face had itself become obscured by a starfield-patterned black mask. Green cuffs wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles, and a single strip of green encircled his waist.

Parallax gaped at Kyle in shock, as did the rest of the Justice League, amazed at the transformation that had occurred in him. "What the hell are you?" Parallax furiously inquired.

"_**I'm the Green Lantern!**_" Kyle declared, his voice echoing as he made that claim, a claim accented by a brutal power ring-enhanced uppercut to Parallax's jaw, so quick that even the Flashes were hard-pressed to see it coming. The punch knocked Parallax half-across the city, and Kyle was far from done, as he sped across the city in a flash of green to meet Parallax halfway and kick him back the other way. Not intending to stop so easily, emerald chains sprouted from Kyle's aura and grabbed Parallax, holding him fast for Kyle to do a slingshot maneuver leading into a brutal kick with both feet that sent the fallen Green Lantern crashing into the ground, making a crater even bigger than what he'd done to Wally and Iris.

"How are you doing this?!" Parallax asked.

"_**Willpower!**_" Kyle responded. "_**It's what makes a Green Lantern a Green Lantern, something you don't know as much about as you thought you did! If you did, you wouldn't have turned on your fellow Lanterns! If you did, you wouldn't have killed everyone in the Justice League! If you did, you wouldn't be trying to remake the universe over and over as if you were God!**_" Throughout his speech, he accented each "you did" with a brutal ring-powered strike to Parallax, whether with his fists or with his constructs. _**"My will is stronger than yours, Parallax! That's why you won't win! Even if you beat me, you won't win! Because I won't give up! Ever!**_"

With that final declaration, Kyle summoned a legion of what looked like insect-armored warriors that lunged feet-first at Parallax, landing powerful flying kicks to his midsection before Kyle struck the finishing blow with his own emerald energy-charged flying kick, felling Parallax once and for all in a blinding flash of emerald light. Surprising Iris and Nightwing, the emerald light began to give way to a purer white light, and they heard a familiar voice speaking through it: _"It's time to come back, you two. You're not needed in this universe anymore. They can take it from here."_

"Wait!" Iris tried to shout, but it was swallowed by the brightness of the white light.

"Parallax might not even –!" Nightwing tried to protest, only for that to also be swallowed by the flooding white light.

~EXE~

"– be down for the count!" he finished in desperation, before taking stock of his surroundings and noticing that he and Iris were inside a wrecked house that they recognized as Buffy Summers' residence. They were also surprised to find two of Buffy standing together, one otherworldly and radiant like Nightwing knew their boss to be and the other more down-to-Earth in her appearance, not to mention looking like she'd been through one hell of a fight. They saw their fellow Exiles looking a bit worse for wear, although Spider's symbiotic suit seemed to have morphed into a chitinous armored shell. More surprising still was the sight of what looked like a new member of the team, a young brunet Japanese man with reddish-brown eyes, as well as a blue British police box in the living room alongside a slightly disheveled-looking brown-haired Caucasian man.

They weren't the only ones surprised, though; the more earthly Buffy and her associates were also gaping at them in astonishment. "Why are you dressed up like Superman?" a redheaded girl, the Potential Slayer now turned real Slayer Vi, asked.

"Um, 'Nightwing' was technically a Kryptonian legend," a short blond man, the nerdish Andrew, offered as explanation, while his eyes kept drifting to Nightwing's lean frame in the skintight black costume.

"Vi, Andrew, that's Nightwing," Spider stated. "He's our leader. And if you must know, he's just as much the Nightwing you know as we're the Spider-Man you know."

"Yeah, sure," Vi uttered, sounding a bit embarrassed.

Iris looked skeptically at the subtly glowing Buffy. "Were you the voice telling me and Nightwing we weren't needed in that world anymore?"

"Yeah," Omni-Buffy admitted. "Nice to meet you, Iris West."

"And I'm guessing you're the one who put this team together?" Iris went on.

"I am," Omni-Buffy answered simply.

The "dark Slayer," Faith Lehane, looked Nightwing up and down, her eyes roaming his lithe form. "Gotta say, you look even better than in the comics."

Xander was himself eyeing Iris with wonderment and bewilderment. "Wow. Lady Flash. Girl Flash. Been a while since I saw one of those. Uh . . . it looks good on you. All red and . . ."

Iris giggled at the flustered Xander. "You're cute."

Nightwing scowled, but then he figured this was Iris's way of getting back at him for all the female attention he had unintentionally accrued while in that other version of the world he'd once known. It still didn't prevent him from feeling annoyed and jealous.

"Ah, the Woman Who Rides the Lightning and the Boy Wonder who now carries the legacy of Krypton," the disheveled man remarked in a whimsical tone. "Charmed to make your acquaintance. You can call me the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" Iris asked.

"Oh, yes, that old joke," the Doctor brushed off her question. "Being a TV program in this world raises some rather disconcerting existential questions, but I suppose it's the same for the rest of you. And I can always visit the casting director and ask them to make a redhead the next me."

"'Next me'?" Iris repeated, confused.

"Like all Time Lords, I can regenerate every so often, and when I do, my appearance and sometimes my personality change," the Doctor explained. "Oh, I still have the same memories and identity, but I can be very different from how I was previously."

"Like the time you were an arrogant jerk in an ugly jacket?" Xander offered.

"Not in those terms, but yes, that would be one way of describing it," the Doctor answered.

"My name's Kazuma Yagami," the brunet Japanese man introduced himself. "I'm told you're supposed to be our leader."

"Yeah," Nightwing admitted. "What's the Doctor doing here?"

"Suffice it to say that I will be your travel guide throughout time and space and I will be your advisor in the ways of extraterrestrial life," he replied in that same whimsical tone. "When you've lived for nearly a thousand years, you see – and do – a lot of things."

"And people?" Kennedy asked mischievously.

"I decline to comment," the Doctor answered. "Right now, we have an army of Turok-Han, the ancestors of the modern vampire, gearing up to eat humanity alive and kick off an apocalypse. We're not going to let that happen, are we?"

"Don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds like the kind of thing I definitely wouldn't let happen," Nightwing agreed.

"Yeah, and after that, can I stop off to get some new glasses?" Iris wondered. "That jerk Parallax broke mine."

Nightwing chuckled slightly. "Yeah, I'll get you some new ones after we stop the Turok-Han."

Iris cracked a wicked smile. "Then let's beat some Turoks into dust!"

Faith let out an equally wicked smirk. "I think I'm gonna like you."


End file.
